To the End of the Road
by JukeboxJulia
Summary: ""Do you want to get in the car?" There's a lilt in Cheryl's voice, as if all Betty's problems could be solved with a night drive around Riverdale." / Betty and Cheryl take to the road just to have one week away from that town.
1. The Town With Pep!

The thing about travel is that the it looks the same all across America: unending achromatic concrete cutting through green planes or through skinny brown woods or through cities you'd never hear of if not for the exit signs. Every gas station and convenience store yield the same selection of chocolate bars and cheese chips. Chain restaurants appear in California exactly as they do in Maine and all the space in between. On the highway, though, race bored or angry or inspired or indifferent passengers, a different story in each car.

Tonight, the highway was silent and empty, save for Betty Cooper staring out the open window of Cheryl Blossom's cherry red roadster, blonde hair coming loose in fierce wisps from her ponytail, the fanciful analog clock on the dashboard ticking idly ticking toward the twelve, signaling that the first official day of spring break was about to begin.

Spring break. Every other year, for Betty, it had meant retreating from school and math and novels and homework back to her friends, her family. It had meant long nights watching movies and new television shows with her sister Polly in the basement; admiring the trees and the flowers all throughout the town of Riverdale with Archie Andrews, her best friend; tagging along with her mother when she had to run errands, waiting in the car in front of the Riverdale Register with her ear to the phone, Kevin Keller excitedly filling her in on all the town's latest gossip.

What could she have done this spring break? With her family in shambles, with her long-lost brother creeping further and further into the darkness, with her sister gone and her parents working overtime at the Register, trying to pin the town's troubles on everybody else.

The Coopers had never gone on vacation during spring break, that was reserved for Christmas and summertime, and truly, Betty had never minded. But now the idea of staying in the house was unbearable. Even going out and spending the days with her friends was a dreadful thought.

Jughead Jones, her boyfriend was out of the question. Too painful. He was there for her, covering for her the night she hid the body. And he didn't even really know why. Hell, _she_ didn't even really know why; she was just being loyal. And he was, too, so they were all tied together in a fat, ugly knot of crime and danger and gangs and blood and blood and blood.

There was something unsettling about seeing her best friend Veronica Lodge, too, even if this was her first spring break from Riverdale High. She was so enthralled with Archie as of late— which largely eliminated him from her options as well. There was something going on with them. Something dark. Something she didn't want to get involved with. Something she simply _couldn't_ get involved with.

And the town itself was a nightmare. It had been since the night of the back-to-school semiformal: Riverdale was a place where bad things happen, where children are murdered by their own fathers, where serial killers terrorize the town in the name of goodness and righteousness. Where her boyfriend joined a gang, where she had almost been forced to bury her childhood best friend alive, where her life was threatened, where her sister was threatened, where her family had imploded and then quietly put themselves back together if only at surface level.

Where she'd hidden a goddamn body.

Riverdale's dark roots reached through every streetway, into every cookie-cutter house, seeped into the town hall, the high school, the supermarket…

Everyone had been walking the dark side since Jason Blossom's murder. Since the arrival of the Black Hood.

It was too much. It was too much with her mother and Chic and Jughead and FP and with high school, but it was far too much for Betty Cooper to handle without Polly or the distraction of schoolwork, the vision of a far-off future at a college outside of Riverdale.

Spring break, Betty feared, would force her to sit down and digest the horrors all around her.

 _To digest poison_ , because lately Betty hadn't been dealing with anything in a very healthy way.

So, when the school bell rang and Betty left the high school with a bag full of less homework than she would have liked and cut through the cafeteria to catch up to Kevin.

Kevin was left mostly unscathed in the aftermath of Riverdale's suburban horror story, having only suffered the loss of his (Serpent) boyfriend Joaquin, who'd been enlisted to help clean the murder site by Jughead's (Serpent) father.

How history repeats itself.

The common denominator meant, of course, that her own Jughead was doomed for prison or for death or God-knows what else, but Betty tried not to think about that.

"Hey, Kev!" Betty called, picking up her pace as not to lose him in the crowded hallway.

"Betty!" Kevin turned to greet her with a usual smile, genuine and kind. "Are you psyched for break or what?"

"Um, yeah, I guess," Betty said unconvincingly, eyes on her feet steadily making their way toward the grand doors of Riverdale High. "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how I'm going to fill the days."

"Well, that's the beauty of it, right?"

"Not if your long-lost brother is lurking in your house every hour of every day and you're not sure how to fill the cavity left by your runaway sister and your gang-running ex-boyfriend."

Kevin's smile faltered, and he lowered his head as if to help him hear, the way he like to whenever conversation got serious. "Are you okay? If you need to get out or get away, you know my dad and I always welcome you at our house—"

"That's so sweet," Betty said with a fake smile. The offer was well-meaning, but Betty knew that Kevin's father—Sheriff Keller—probably wouldn't be too happy with her presence since she'd suspected him of being a serial killer in a completely justified investigation.

"In fact," Kevin said with a smile, "I'm going to call Archie and Veronica and the four of us can all do something tonight. And Jughead, too, if he doesn't have other plans."

"Yeah. If he doesn't have other plans." She tried not to sound sad or resentful, but Betty Cooper had never had a good poker face.

"I have a, um, _thing_ to do right now," Kevin said vaguely, "but I'll text you as soon as possible, okay? We can all see a movie."

"A _thing_?" Betty inquired with a sly grin.

"Yeah. A thing with Fangs."

"Fogarty?"

"Yeah."

"The _Serpent_ Fangs Fogarty?"

"Guilty," Kevin beamed as he turned a corner and vanished into the crowd of students eager to start break.

Betty sighed. Kevin would never learn his lesson, but the sight of Jughead wrapped in a leather jacket making his way to a meeting of the Swords and Serpents club— whose body consisted exclusively of Southside gang members— reminded Betty that she would never learn hers, either.

Betty pushed her way outside.

 _Free at last,_ she should have thought.

/

Getting an early start on your homework is good. Reading the entirety of _Oedipus the King_ within the first three hours of being out of school because you don't want to face your family issues is not.

 _Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last._

Heart in her throat, Betty stuffed the fat textbook into her backpack and grabbed her phone. No word yet from Kevin.

She did have a text from her mother, though, that said she'd be home a bit late, but would you please take the chicken out of the freezer, sweetie? They were going to have a big family dinner that night.

Great.

Aimless, Betty turned her screen off and dropped the phone to her stomach, staring up at her ceiling, letting her back feel every ridge of the quilt on her bed, the springs underneath.

Her mind wandered back, as did all too often, to the body on the floor of her kitchen, drenched in blood, the bullet hole still fresh in his forehead. How could her family have gone this bad?

As Riverdale sailed deeper and deeper into the evening, Betty's powder-pink ceiling turned to red, the swirling wine red of the blood wet on her kitchen floor, her slowly closing eyes not unlike that had been closed forever by her own family's hand. Somewhere outside, the Andrews' dog, Vegas, was barking and the wind was cradling the trees back and forth against Betty's bedroom window.

In that moment between sleep and sleeplessness, Betty too far gone into the throes of dreaming yet still aware that her head was on her pillow, there was no past, no death, no killers, no crazy mothers or Serpent boyfriends. There were the sounds of the branches against the window and there were a thousand answers but not a single question.

And Betty was standing and she was breathing, the air fresh and salty—she must have been standing by the seaside— and there was nothing but the breeze in her hair and the undeniable ground beneath her bare feet.

But that moment, that place between two spaces, between being awake and dreaming, it could never last.

And like so many dreams, the picture of a carefree teen in her yard eroded away, slowly, almost undetectable, to a nightmare.

/

Betty woke up with a jolt, images from her distorting and disturbing dreams already fading fast. Nightmares could be forgotten when reality was just as scary.

She sucked in a breath, like she had in her almost-dream, but the air wasn't salty or fresh. It was stiflingly sweet from the fumes of the remains of the Blossom maple farm that hadn't been squelched out of existence just yet. Betty shuffled to her window and opened it a crack, not wanting to cool the warm room, and took in a breath of the outside air.

It was good. Not as good as in her dream, but such is to be expected. She pushed the window shut and moved on down to the kitchen to take the chicken from the freezer.

She'd neglected to turn the lights on, because the fading of afternoon to evening was so gradual, and she didn't even think of it now, groping in the dark for the handle to the freezer.

So, the chicken was placed dutifully on the counter and the Cooper kitchen was dark and still.

 _No body on the floor, no body on the floor, not tonight, not tonight, not tonight, no body…_

Betty held her breath.

Outside, a car rolled up and its headlights lit up the kitchen.

The shadows, Betty reminded herself, were just shadows. Not pools of blood. Not growing pools of smeared and spattered blood.

Just shadows.

But the headlights didn't move, kept the kitchen in long shadows and yellow light.

Perhaps her mother was home earlier than she'd let on?

Betty willed herself to the front door and threw it open to face the strange. The blinding headlights, which exaggerated the shadow of every leaf on every tree, every blade of grass, her own towering silhouette halfway in the foyer and halfway on the front stoop. She squinted and realized, with a guilty sense of relief, that the headlights don't belong to her mom's slate little homely car, but a sharp and sleek red convertible.

The top is down and inside sits none other than Cheryl Blossom, head crooked at an angle, eyeing Betty across the yard.

"Cheryl?"

"Betty!" Cheryl's voice is light and carefree, the way it gets when she's plotting something especially devious or prying to get on your good side. "What are you up to? Are your parents home? Is your brother?" With every question, her head tilts to the other side, but from the glare of the headlights, Betty can't make out the expression on Cheryl's face.

"Not too much." Betty shut the front door and stepped down from the stoop. "Nobody's home, so I was working on homework."

"Already? Betty, we have a week for that shit," Cheryl said with a chuckle.

"I know. Thought I'd get a jump start on it though." To keep herself from looking entirely lifeless, Betty said, "I am going to Kevin's tonight. To hang out with Archie and Veronica."

Cheryl nodded. Betty could tell she was only pretending to listen, waiting for her turn to speak again.

"Say, dear cousin, do you want to get in the car?" There's a lilt in Cheryl's voice, as if all Betty's problems could be solved with a night drive around Riverdale.

"Not really." Betty backed toward the house.

"We could drive up the highway…"

Betty's hand was on the knob.

"Could drive all night if wanted to. We could get pretty far."

"What are you talking about?" Betty said over her shoulder.

"We could be out of state before anyone even realizes we're gone."

Betty turned to face the street again, where beyond a thousand other cars were rushing from point A to point B, the interconnected web of roads spanning coast to silvery coast, the night stealing away everything but the fleeting concrete that passed under headlights. Somewhere on the road a car was probably flipping, someone was dying because of someone else's carelessness. Someone was going to be late for the night shift, someone was staring blankly at the fenceposts that passed, someone else turning the volume up as the radio played their favorite song, just for them, just for them.

Somewhere, someone was standing at the coast and breathing in the salty sea air, someone who had never heard of the sleepy town of Riverdale or the deviant Southside Serpents or the tragedy that was Jason Blossom or the grisly Black Hood murders.

"I want to go to the beach."

"The beach?"

"Like the ocean."

"Yeah, I know what the beach is, Betty. I think that can be arranged. We could make it to the Atlantic by tomorrow afternoon, I think, if we were to head straight east. Would take us significantly longer to go west, but…" Cheryl trailed off.

Betty realized that she had walked away from the house entirely, that she was feet away from the car and Cheryl Blossom was staring her dead in the eye.

"So, do you want to get in the car?"

Betty took hold of the car door handle and pulled it open.

No sooner had Betty buckled her seatbelt than Cheryl put her foot on the gas and the car lurched across the residential road ten miles over the speed limit.

They were bound for the highway, nothing but road between Cheryl and Betty and the sparkling blue coast, nothing but the gas pedal between their feet and the sand.

"Before we're out of town," Cheryl began as she pulled into a gas station, "let's pick up a few things. Like snacks and drinks and shit."

"I don't have any money," Betty said, feeling stupid when she realized that all she had brought with her were the things in her pocket: her phone, an old tissue, and a tampon she thankfully wouldn't need for a couple of weeks. But no money. Not enough to break even for gas or for snacks or meals… "Can we turn around? I didn't bring my wallet and I don't have my card or any cash or—"

"I know." Cheryl smirked, flashing a wad of bills. "I've got you covered."

Betty was intrigued but knew better than to ask where Cheryl had gotten the money from. "Oh… kay," she drawled. "What are we looking at? Candy? Granola bars? Soda? Water?"

"A healthy mix of all our options," Cheryl said, shoving a black credit card into Betty's hands. "Don't want to be boxed into one thing. You pick the snacks and drinks and pay and pay for gas, too, I'm going to pump our propellant."

"Okay." Betty flipped over the card. "Do I need a pin number? Or your signature or…?"

"Just go," Cheryl's said without turning from the pump, waving Betty off with a halfhearted flick of the wrist.

Cheryl had given no other criteria than a variety and Betty didn't know if they'd be on the road for hours or for days, so she scooped up one of each candy they had and three boxes of nutrition bars, plus a case of twenty-four bottled waters.

Struggling to lift the case with her one free hand, Betty staggered to the counter to pay, told the cashier she'd also like to pay for the gas outside. The cashier, whose nametag read "Gary", wordlessly scanned each item with a beep that sounded throughout the little corner store.

A six pack of cherry cola caught Betty's eye and, knowing it was Cheryl's favorite, Betty hoisted the cardboard package up to the counter and asked Gary to ring them up, too.

"Road trip?" Gary asked and his voice was hoarse.

"Something like that, I think."

The total was over a hundred dollars, which the card Cheryl had provided covered without issue, but still Betty hoped Cheryl knew how to budget.

Gary put the candy and the nutrition bars in a bag so Betty could, barely, carry all her stuff out of the store, balancing the soda and the bag's weights between her fingers in one hand, the water occupying all of her other hand and most of her arm.

"Took you long enough," Cheryl said dryly, perched on the door of the convertible, rather uncharacteristic red Converse resting on the driver's seat. She was wearing skintight jeans, too, which suited her well but were far from her usual choice of leggings. "What'd you get?"

"Water, soda, and assorted bars, ranging from vaguely healthy to distinctly unhealthy," Betty said exaltedly, unloading the bulky goods in the back, without Cheryl offering to help.

"Did you get any fruit?" Cheryl slid down into the driver's seat as Betty opened the passenger side door.

"No. Should I have?"

Cheryl shrugged. "It would probably go bad pretty quickly anyway." She revved the engine. "You ready to go, Goldilocks?"

"Yeah, here's your card back."

"You can just put that in the glove box. We're going to use cash for most of this adventure."

"Um, okay, why?"

"Because I'm paranoid. If we use the card, then my mother can track us and then we might have to abandon our quest for the open ocean."

"And you're sure you have enough cash?"

"Check my backpack, Cooper."

Betty twisted into the back to grab Cheryl's leather bag. She unzipped the front pocket to reveal an impressive wad of bills, ranging from ones to hundreds. "Holy…" Betty started. She knew better than to ask where Cheryl had gotten it, but in her disbelief the words slipped out. "How did you…"

"I stole it from my dear mother," Cheryl smirked dryly, "but please, please don't ask how she got it."

The convertible crawled out of the station and onto the road, yellow headlights cutting through the dark to reveal tree trunks shooting up from the edge of the road. Fox Forest, where Moose and Midge had been attacked, where Kevin had spent so many nights trying not to be alone, where the Riverdale Reaper had struck down a family, where the Black Hood had tormented Betty with her own goddamn reflection…

"So, I need to know now which direction to head," Cheryl said without taking her eyes from the road. "Are we going west or east?"

They were coming up on the sign that marked Riverdale's border, all greyed, dusty colors in the night, that said in lofty letters "Now leaving Riverdale, the town with pep!"

"West," Betty said definitively.

The bottom of the sign read: "Please visit again soon!"

"We're going far and we're going fast," Betty demanded. They had to.

How else would Betty escape that picture in her head, the image of her own face beneath the mask, of the Black Hood staring right back at her through a dirty old mirror in a death-cursed old house?

/

 **A/N:** _So I'm thrusting myself into a Riverdale multichap. Enjoy and please please please hit me with reviews or comments with your thoughts as I continue to update!_


	2. Sunshine

Betty was pulled from a tenuous sleep by the sun turning the black behind her eyelids to red, the rowdy drum beats of what must have been a hundred vigorous songs that had played over the radio the night before still rattling around in her head.

The sky was clear and blue, the sun glaring directly through the windshield. The top to the car was up now, and Cheryl was taking them off an exit.

"You're awake."

Betty could only hum in response, rubbing her eyes, cracking her back, and trying to get an awful kink from her neck. "When did I fall asleep?" Betty could remember the previous night vividly, and at no point had she felt even remotely sleepy.

Once they were on the highway, the night was all racing, all music resonating in their chests, all cars passing by, all lights in suspended lines as they sped farther and farther from the town of Riverdale.

Betty had turned the radio on and switched it and switched it until it landed on a station that played classic rock and modern rock and other such songs for running away. She and Cheryl had scream-sung the songs, punctuated by local commercials, chocolate bars, and warm cherry cola, until their voices were hoarse. Above their heads, the moon rode with them, milk-light turning the inside of the car silver and white.

Perhaps they'd been a bit too cavalier, Betty thought hesitantly; her mother had texted again and again asking where Betty was and what she was doing and for the love of God, why wasn't she home yet? To which, Betty had texted something vague about being with Cheryl Blossom and not coming home that night or the night after or, possibly, the night after or… Betty really had no idea how long it would take to drive to California.

Betty dug in her sweatshirt pocket for her phone which, she realized with dread, was entirely out of battery.

Realistically, they should have aimed for the east coast, but there was something less glamourous about it than the west coast, which was more romanticized, more sentimental, more of a place they might be able to find answers. To say nothing of the fact that is was so damn far away that, probably, no one there had so much as heard of Jason Blossom or the Black Hood.

"Hey, Cheryl, can I borrow your phone charger?"

"Didn't bring one." They were pulling into another gas station, the third that Betty could recall.

"We need gas again?"

"This car is from 1961, Betty. It drinks gas like my family drinks maple syrup. And I'm going to level with you: trying to bring it across the country is really stupid and I'm shocked it can go as fast as it does on the highways, but whatever."

"A lot about this is really stupid," Betty mumbled. "Like, for starters, what do you mean you don't have a phone charger."

"Exactly what I said. I didn't even bring my phone."

"You didn't bring a phone?"

"Nope."

"Won't people be worried about you?"

"In theory," Cheryl sighed, an edge in her voice, as she got out of the car.

Betty folded her hands and leaned back in her seat. She was trying to figure a way to ask if she could buy a phone charger in the gas station, but she felt bad asking for Cheryl's money, even if she had come across it dishonestly. Plus, Betty figured eventually, the car more than likely didn't have a phone jack, so she kept her mouth shut while Cheryl went inside to pay in cash.

"Are we going to get breakfast?" By the time Cheryl reemerged, Betty was very aware that the only sustenance inside of her was either chocolate-covered or otherwise entirely saturated with sugar. "Because I kind of want, you know, real food."

"Yeah, that sounds good," Cheryl agreed. She looked different, Betty decided, than the last time she had really taken a good look at her. Maybe that had been last night, or after Jason's death, or maybe it had been way back in middle school when Cheryl was too good to even glance at Betty. Cheryl's eyes were down and her jaw was taut, scowling at the ground as the car sucked in gasoline. She had sad eyes now; Betty had once thought they were strictly beautiful.

The pump started and Cheryl sheathed the nozzle and reentered the car. She wrinkled her nose, like she was trying to remember something, and her hands were shaking against the steering wheel. "Breakfast," she remembered. "Where do you want to go?"

"Are you okay? You don't look well."

"I'm fine."

"Wait, hold on, what time is it?" Betty realized, disturbed. "When was the last time you slept?"

"The last time I slept? Late September, early October. Why?"

Betty checked the clock. "Good lord, have you been driving for twelve hours? Seriously, when was the last time you slept?"

"Oh, _seriously_? Late September or early October, Betty. I don't sleep anymore; I just can't."

"Okay, let's check into a hotel or at least let me drive for a little while."

"Fine," Cheryl grumbled, pushing the car door open once again. "We'll get breakfast and then get at least a few more miles away and then we can check into a hotel."

"Good. I want to take a shower," Betty said. "By the way, where are we?"

"Pennsylvania," Cheryl said simply. She gave no indication as to how deep into the state they were or which city they were near or whether they were making good time. In truth, Cheryl probably didn't even know.

They drifted through the streets of the truck-stop Pennsylvania town until finding a suitable eatery: a café with a French name that wasn't very creative.

" _Lieu de Nourriture_?" Cheryl snorted. "I only just started taking French last semester, but I'm pretty sure that just means 'Place of Food'."

"Simple and to-the-point, I guess," Betty shrugged. It looked nice enough, all tan walls and chocolate countertops, the kind of place the town's hipster students probably went on Sunday mornings. "I just hope they have good food."

They did not.

As Betty choked down a generous serving of almost unbearably soggy waffles, Cheryl struggled with overdone eggs and charred toast. The one upside was the waiter, not much older than them and excessively friendly, who had been unable to contain his smile as he shared the morning's specials.

"He's chipper," Betty commented.

"Yeah, well, this town probably didn't have a filicide and serial killer both in one semester."

"Or gangs and wealth borders that tear the town apart. Okay, fair point. Speaking of which, um, what is the point of this expedition? Are we, like, running away forever?"

"God, no."

"Why not? It may be better for us."

"For starters, I have no idea how to budget this money. We will be completely broke by the end of the week. And second… nothing good ever happens to runaways. They always end up homeless or in a gang or otherwise screwed."

"Like in a home for troubled youth or tied to a chair in the basement of a sketchy bar. Okay, I get it. When are we coming home?"

"Okay, well it's Saturday. School starts up again in nine days, Monday. It should take us four or five days to get out to the ocean and then four or five days to get back. With any luck, we'll be back in Riverdale before school starts again."

Betty bit her lip. Her mother would be furious. "As long as we're back by that Monday, because Dr. Phylum has been on my case about missing."

"Sucks to be you," Cheryl chirped. "Turns out when your father kills your brother you pretty much get all A's regardless of whether you bother to show up or not."

"Sure." Betty took another bite of waffle, the bread falling apart in her mouth almost immediately and sliding down her throat without prompt, leaving a sickly-sweet trail to her stomach. "Ugh, do you want any of this?"

"God, no. I can't take maple syrup since… everything," Cheryl said with a vague gesture. She stopped cutting her food and set her cutlery down.

 _Can't eat, can't sleep._ Fair trades for the trauma she'd endured. Betty wondered how she'd be coping a few long months from now. She wanted to say something, to find a question to ask or to answer, but she couldn't come up with anything so the two sat in silence, the silence louder than the buzz of the café or the metallic scrape of Betty's fork and knife, until the bill came.

Cheryl hissed through her teeth upon reading the amount; "Pretty pricey for such God-awful food," she explained.

It had been bad food, but now that there was something of substance in her, Betty felt more awake, like the night before she'd gotten more than a few wobbly hours of in-and-out sleep. "How far are we going until we go to the hotel?"

"However many miles it takes for us to get hungry again," Cheryl said as she laid out the money for the meal.

"You should tip the guy more," Betty blurted out.

"What?"

"He was nice and he works at a crappy place in a small town and you should tip him more because he deserves it."

Cheryl glared. "I'm going to let that go because you're Betty and it's the first day and you're just that oblivious," she snapped, "but don't forget that we have a limited amount of funds and this breakfast is way too much without a tip. If you want to pay—if you stuck your neck out far enough to get us the cash for this trip like I did— please be my guest. And it's not your place to decide what people deserve."

"Okay, sorry."

"Good."

Cheryl's bitterness didn't fester and Betty couldn't decide if that was good or bad; Cheryl was the type to either let something go within the minute or carry a grudge to her grave. But who could be mad, a half-hour later, moving freely on the open road?

In the passenger seat, Cheryl was sitting back with her head tilted up, eyes closed. Betty thought she had been asleep for the past twenty minutes, at least—she hadn't moved since getting in the car— but, Cheryl spoke suddenly without moving. "Ms. Burble, the guidance counselor, says that if I really hadn't slept since October, I'd be dead. And that's probably true, but I haven't gotten more than a couple of hours in at once."

"You see the guidance counselor?"

"Principal Wetherbee kind of made me, but it's not very helpful and I don't think Ms. Burble has any idea how to approach everything that happened. I'd prefer an actual therapist, but Mommy won't shell out the money and besides, apparently there are absolutely no therapists or grief counselors or psychiatrists in Riverdale."

"I figure she won't be too pleased to hear about this stress-relief trip."

"Who? The counselor or my mother? Because both would be correct."

"The counselor."

"Oh, yeah. She'll use it to point out exactly how unhinged I am later when she wants me to do something differently or overshare or stay longer when I should be getting to class or to Vixen practice, but that's a problem for the future." Cheryl rolled her head slightly right, away from Betty, and she took that to mean that the conversation was over.

The radio was playing bright and familiar songs about love and devotion that flowed out and met her ears like honey touching lips, the sun holding steady overhead. Indeed, there were no problems now.

Betty even felt confident driving on the highway, although she had just recently been given the honor of a driver's license and probably wasn't skilled enough to be going 70 on an interstate. But to Betty, it didn't matter, because even if they got in a wreck, they'd crash with a cheerful soundtrack and the sun on their faces, thick as butter.

Cheryl looked like a lizard sunning, her head all the way back and her eyes closed, red hair in warm wisps in the wind. She looked peaceful, was humming along to the radio, playing a jingly song Betty knew well enough to chirp out a few lyrics but not well enough to have any preexisting memory with it. This—the world rushing by without a qualm and her skin buzzing with ecstasy— this would be the memory it drew forward every time after.

The sheer volume of songs they burned through was the only indication of the passage of time—Betty figured that this was the closest to flying anyone could ever get, that she was experiencing something supernatural, and she could have just as easily been on that interstate for five minutes as five hours. But time, like most things, didn't care if Betty noticed or knew about it and kept marching on.

"Okay. Lunch," Cheryl said at last. "Or dinner." They were in that odd midsection between the two meals, between afternoon and evening.

"Oh, I'm hungry," Betty realized. "Next exit, here we come."

The next exit spat the car out in a crumbling Ohio suburb, the closest hotels a four-story place called the Noble Grove and a sketchy two-story motel called only "Motel".

After circling the place and deciding that those were their only two options, Betty let Cheryl make the call.

"Let's treat ourselves. Noble Grove."

"Noble Grove!"

The Noble Grove was nicer than its outside would have you believe; it was well-decorated and had that still hotel smell that created the illusion of a fancier place.

"They have room service!" Cheryl called excitedly as Betty flopped on the queen bed by the window.

Room service, Betty thought in that moment, was, for reasons beyond her knowledge, the best possible thing the universe had to offer. "I am going to shower," she said, making no move to do so because the hotel blanket was pulling her into a congenial embrace, "because I haven't showered since Thursday morning."

"Disgusting," Cheryl remarked as though it was her duty to do so. "You probably stink."

How long had Betty been away from home for? Almost twenty-four hours. It had been longer since she'd seen any of her family. That thought compelled her to pull herself off the bed and shuffle over to the side table where— _hallelujah_! —the Noble Grove had provided a docking station that would fit her phone.

She plugged it in, let the black screen stare her down for a second before admitting that it needed a few moments before it could display probably hundreds of missed texts and calls and frantic questions.

Too much to face at that exact moment. "Okay, I'm going to hit the shower."

"Cool, I'm going to order us a giant pizza. But a veggie pizza because I don't want to be too fat when we have to go back to school."

"Good call."

Betty stripped off her clothes, which were really the only things she had for this trip. The clothes on her back: some favored pale pink undergarments, a white blouse and lively pink jacket, a navy pair of jeans, and ancient white socks under low-cut tan boots.

And then she was entirely naked while in the other room, Cheryl ran through their order to the hotel operator over the white courtesy telephone.

Despite its amenities, the Noble Grove had subpar water pressure, and Betty had to stand under the water for too long for all the shampoo to wash out of her hair. They'd been parsimonious on the shampoo, too, and Betty had used a minimal amount to ensure Cheryl would be able to have clean hair by the end of the night, too. Still, the water was clean and hot and Betty could feel grime and dirt from the dirty highway wind vanishing from her skin. She was squeaky and clear, except for her blonde hair, which was still sudsy as she sang the chorus of that cheerful, swinging song again and again.

She pictured the past twenty-four hours as a montage in a film, the last scene of the movie, the good-hearted teen girl finally breaking free from the suffocating, poisonous town where far too much had happened. Never mind the fact that Riverdale was still out there, never mind everything lurking in its streets that were still breathing back east…

Never mind the fact that last time she'd showered, for a split second, she'd seen all the water go red.

Never mind post-traumatic stress or whatever deep-rooted anger issue she'd been grappling with for the longest time, never mind everything except the last scene of the movie where she's happy for a fleeting moment.

 _The only place worth being_ , she hummed as a wave of bubbly shampoo sloshed from her head to the shower floor.

She was still humming when she whirled out of the steam-filled bathroom wrapped in a pristine hotel robe.

"My turn," Cheryl chirped. "Food's on the way and money's on the table. Also, you should take our clothes down to the laundry room."

"And do the laundry?"

"Well only if you want clean clothes tomorrow," Cheryl quipped as she closed the bathroom door. "I'm leaving my garments on the floor."

To put off looking at her phone, Betty waited for the sound of the shower to start before slinking into the bathroom and adding Cheryl's clothes, save for her red leather jacket, to the laundry bag.

The laundry room was empty and dark and the song had left Betty's head, but the repetitive _thunk_ of the one other running machine was rhythmic enough to keep her going as she got quarters from the metallic change machine on the wall.

Cheryl's clothes were fancy and expensive, clothes fit to be worn by a member of the Blossom family. They probably had to be treated with special care and consideration, but since Betty was in the basement of a mostly anonymous hotel on an odd end of Ohio, she just threw the clothes in the machine with everything else, taking only enough care to separate whites from colors.

The machine would be done in fifty minutes, and Betty didn't want to wait in the dark in nothing but a robe, plus the food was on its way, so she returned to the room, resolving to finally face her phone as she eased up the stairs.

 _49 missed texts, 5 missed calls._

Not too bad, considering she'd been gone so long and considering her mother had a cow any time Betty was out past ten.

There was a flurry of _where in the name of God are you's_ and _if this is a joke I am going to kill you's_ and _answer your phone, young lady's_ from her mother before a smattering of stranger texts, Cooper-specific texts that were trying not to sound too shady.

 _Elizabeth Cooper you can't just do this to me and you know exactly why._

It seemed everyone was suddenly extensively curious as to how Betty Cooper was and what she was up to, a rarity on most other days. Classmates asked if Betty was actually with Cheryl, as the rumor mill had accurately conjectured probably just by chance; nobody had actually seen them leave town together, except for, possibly, Gary the cashier from the gas station.

Veronica, Archie, Kevin, and (her heart ached at) Jughead had sent significantly fewer of the messages than Betty had hoped for, generic _where have you been_ and _why didn't you show up to Kevin's thing?_

She listened to her voice mails, all early-stage pleas for answers with questions for her well-being sprinkled in stingily, though a couple of voices did break worriedly.

Betty felt awful leaving them with so many questions, but she couldn't bear to call, to hear her family's voices, the voices that embodied Riverdale begging her to come back, come back to Riverdale, that town...

She responded to the texts slowly and more deliberately than she had the night before: "I'm with Cheryl. We're hanging out over break, which is weird but kind of what I need right now." She wanted to assuage everyone's fears by sharing her location— _see, I'm cozy in a nice hotel called the Noble Grove_ —but Cheryl's paranoia that someone would come out and take them right back to Riverdale stopped her from sharing that much information. So, she simply said: "We're on the road."

Cheryl stepped out of the bathroom in another white robe just as Betty pressed send.

/

 **A/N:** _Happy Valentine's Day! Are you at home, alone, drowning your loneliness in chocolates and fanfiction? It's cool. I am, too. Send me reviews instead of valentines? Pretty please?_


	3. The Only Bed Worth Sleeping In

The Noble Grove pizza was too greasy for Cheryl to stomach more than two pieces, she knew. So, she stacked two slices on top of each other on a too-small white plate, their edges hanging dangerously over the radius.

Halfway through her first and her body was still humming with nerves, so she stood from her bed and opened the mini-fridge.

"Hey, you're blocking the TV," Betty whined. Of course, she actually cared about whatever movie they were watching on one of those basic cable channels.

"For a good cause," Cheryl said as she pulled a tall bottle of champagne from the fridge. "I say we treat ourselves." When Betty didn't say anything in response, Cheryl laughed. "What, have you never had a drink before?"

"No, I have…"

"Communion with your family Sunday mornings doesn't count, church mouse."

"We actually only go to church on Christmas and Easter... Also, I didn't like it one bit, but I had a few at Jughead's birthday. You remember _that_."

"Well," Cheryl plopped down next to Betty, "Jughead's birthday _sucked_."

"Your fault," Betty pointed out.

"So let's pretend it's Christmas."

"Fine."

Cheryl smiled and opened the bottle with her teeth.

She expected it to come away with red lipstick turned purple on the green glass rim, but she'd without makeup on… It was that day at Sweetwater River, the day before the Black Hood first struck, Cheryl realized, and felt suddenly self-conscious.

As if reading her thoughts, Betty said, "Your face is all sunburned."

It was true, Cheryl could feel her face was hot and red, but Betty's was equally so. "You are, too." She passed the open bottle over. "Here, you take the first sip."

"We're not using glasses?"

"Hell, no; this way is so much more fun than using those lame little plastic cups they give us."

Betty rolled her eyes but took the bottle and hesitantly put her lips to it.

"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

"Shut up." She took a mouthful. "Oh. That's not bad."

"I know."

"Drink this vodka, yo, down the hatch!" Betty quoted as she took another swig.

"Good. Now quit hogging it, I want some of that action." Cheryl snatched back the champagne and took a generous amount. It was cheap stuff—dry and overcarbonated—but she didn't say anything because Betty seemed to like it. Instead, she turned to the television and picked up her half-slice. "Okay, help me out with what's going on in this movie because I have not been paying any attention whatsoever."

"Okay, that girl?" Betty pointed to the young brunette on screen. "She's an angsty preteen, I think because her mother's dead."

"Okay."

"And that guy's in love with her," Betty pointed again as a scruffy black-haired boy appeared on screen, staring lustfully across an open field.

"Ugh, of course."

"But _she's_ in love with a blonde guy from school whose name is I think Matt."

"Let me guess: Matt is a huge douchebag."

"He is indeed." Betty took a drink. "Also, her father is really overprotective because of what happened to the mom."

"How did you get all this information in the ten minutes the TV's been on?"

Betty shrugged with a smile.

"Dear God, have you seen this tawdry cornball movie before?"

Betty said nothing, then admitted quietly: "My mom really loves the Hallmark channel…"

"Oh, of-freaking-course she does," Cheryl laughed. "Well, no spoilers, Cooper. I want to be surprised when everyone gets everything they've ever wanted."

When they turned back to the television, the angsty preteen was dramatically stroking the snout of a massive black stallion.

"Oh, shit," Cheryl cackled, "of _course_ it's a horse movie."

"I know you told me not to spoil anything, but the horse ends up solving all their problems." Betty giggled and took another slug.

"God, Betty, way to ruin the whole movie." Cheryl grabbed the bottle back. "So I'm guessing Blonde Douchebag—what did you say his name was?"

"Matt."

"Matt. Okay, so Matt's going to finally take an interest in Angsty Preteen but he's going to disrespect the horse and Angsty Preteen will realize she's worth more and deserves better. And that's when the pasty white guy is going to meet the horse and Pasty White Boy will be, like, the only person the horse respects outside of Angsty Preteen herself, thus proving her to be worthy of her love?" Cheryl guessed. "Oh, also, at some point, the horse will save the Angsty Preteen's life so the worrisome surviving parent will feel okay about Angsty Preteen horseback riding." She took a long drink. "Am I right?"

Betty was silent, then: "Are these movies really that predictable?"

"I've seen my fair share of horse movies in my day. I know what to expect."

"You have not."

"I have."

"You don't really strike me as the type to have ever had a horse girl phase."

Probably not, because Cheryl knew for a fact that Betty had had a horse-heavy childhood and didn't tend to think they could have anything in common. "My parents had a couple horses on the farm. I thought they were cool as hell."

The pizza and the champagne sat warm in her stomach, and as the night crept on, as Angsty Preteen (whose name actually turned out to be Erica) got everything she ever wanted, Cheryl grew drowsy and comfortable.

She was almost asleep, head back on Betty's bed, when Betty stood up and the mattress shifted. "Okay, we've gotta bush our teeth," Betty announced. "My mouth feels _furry_."

She was right—between the pizza and the fact that they hadn't brushed their teeth since they were back in Riverdale, they were probably disgusting.

"They might have brushes and toothpaste at the front desk," Cheryl guessed.

"Okay, I'll go down. I have to take our clothes out of the dryer downstairs anyway."

And Betty left.

Cheryl sat up and stared at Betty's phone, daring it to go off, to explode with hundred frantic texts and voicemails like it had when Betty was in the shower. She felt a pang of guilt, remembering that moment. Everyone had been so genuinely concerned, so afraid for Betty's well-being.

And Cheryl had known that Betty wasn't the type to let people worry about her for too long.

So, when she heard the shower turn on, heard water hitting porcelain, she snatched up the phone and deleted a few texts, the really heart wrenching ones from her mother and Veronica and Jughead and Archie and even Betty's long-lost brother Chic.

Because _screw them_ ; Betty was having a good time out here and there was no reason they should be guilting her into coming back.

 _Deleted, deleted, deleted, deleted, deleted_ …

But the texts had kept coming.

And Cheryl couldn't bear the thought of Betty caving and wanting to go home early or turn the car around or, worse, asking someone to come pick her up. So, with just a few more taps, she blocked Betty's whole ridiculous posse and her family from hell.

Cheryl knew, staring at the mute phone, that it was wrong, but she also knew that it would keep Betty close. It would keep Betty with her.

That was all that mattered.

Cheryl returned to her own bed and stared at the ceiling, fiddling with the spider brooch she'd attached to her robe.

The door clicked and Betty swung through the opening, holding a bag of clean clothes, two horrifically cheap toothbrushes and the tiniest tube of toothpaste Cheryl had ever seen. "I got the goods!" Betty called.

Less than an hour later, with minty fresh breath, Cheryl was staring at the ceiling again. It was dark now, Betty breathing heavily in the bed beside Cheryl's, sleeping off her first-ever buzz.

Voices in the hall, probably another sparse group of travelers settling in for the night, and Cheryl became overly aware of the fact that her bed was closest to the door. If anyone were to break in, Cheryl mused, she would be the first one killed.

A flash of light from the hall as the door opened, a silhouette rushing in, a gunshot or a knife slash sending blood flying, and everything would be over.

Cheryl bit her lip, hard, as the grainy image from the Whyte Wyrm's security footage surfaced in her brain. One gunshot and Jason's head flopped and he died and he was gone forever.

She couldn't breathe.

Cheryl got up from bed, grabbed the key card from the side table, and snuck into the hall, trying to steady her breathing. She paced the hall, the dirty carpet scratching her bare feet, the fluorescent lights far from comforting.

They buzzed endlessly and reminded her of the police station back in Riverdale.

Her father shooting her brother played again in her head.

Again and again and again, every time the same outcome: Jason's lifeless head staring at his lap, his body kept upright by the brutal ropes around his wrists and ankles.

She sat against the wall and let the murder happen behind her eyes until the loop retreated and made way for a dozen other gruesome images: her father's body hanging from the noose in the barn; Jason's corpse, bloated from river water on a cold metal table; Archie and Veronica and Jughead and Betty watching from the shore as Cheryl fell through the ice into Sweetwater River; that awful, irrevocable hole staring at her like the Devil's eye from atop her brother's forehead…

She scolded herself for brooding, tried to stop it by telling herself she was being absurd, overdramatic, self-indulgent. Somehow, it left her wondering why the hell Betty had agreed to come with her the other night.

Betty.

Asleep in the other room, peacefully, removed from whatever demons everyone could see had been haunting her as of late.

She was good. She always had been. _Perfect_. She didn't deserve to live in Riverdale or to have Blossom blood.

Cheryl crept back into the hotel room. Betty was asleep on her side, her face to the wall.

Cheryl climbed in next to her. She was still closest to the door, but they were so close it probably didn't matter. They'd both be killed if someone came in with a weapon. That was fine, she guessed.

Betty shifted, put her hands under her head like a renaissance painting of a child sleeping. And Betty was good, Betty was good.

Cheryl lifted her own hand and started tracing the details in the fabric of the back of Betty's robe. The zigzagged patterns gave way to letters, and then Cheryl was writing out words, confessing every awful thing she'd done since Jason's death to the robe, which was the same as the robe Cheryl was wearing.

She wrote out that she'd failed to protect her beloved twin, that she'd tried to kill herself, that she'd done awful things to Josie McCoy for God-knows what reason, that she'd cut Betty off from her friends back home, that she was terribly, terribly sorry but she couldn't stop.

She hoped the words would sink through the fabric, onto Betty's skin and into her blood (which was the same as Cheryl's blood) and that Betty would grant her forgiveness, like a Catholic sinner begging for God's mercy in confessionals.

She might have written all night.

/

Sunday morning, sunshine was coming through the drapes in one fat beam, the room smelling thick of cheese and grease from their leftovers haphazardly dropped by the door.

She slipped out of bed, the skin turning cold as she emerged from the blankets, and opened the window enough to let a breath of fresh air in. Betty was still asleep, which Cheryl envied deeply, so she turned the television on and muted it.

It was a news report, and Cheryl thought for a moment they might see a report about two missing girls in Riverdale, like runaways always did in television and movies. But, as it happened, two unhappy teens who decided to up and disappear miles away was irrelevant and unexciting in Ohio.

The newscast did make itself useful, though: Cheryl now knew that the weather was going to be nice that day, that it would be another sunny day on the road.

"Hmm, where I am I?" Betty mumbled from the bed.

"Ohio."

"Oh."

"-Hio."

"Right." Betty sat up and looked to the bed where Cheryl hadn't turned her eyes from the television screen. "Did you… um… did you sleep in my bed last night?"

"Just a little bit."

"Okay." Betty stood up. "Why?"

Cheryl wanted to explain about the bed closest to the door, but it felt stupid in broad daylight, so she said nothing and probably looked stupid anyway.

"Okay…" Betty was visibly troubled by the silence. _Stupid piece of shit._ "Well, we should get moving, then. If we want to make it to California."

"Yep."

"Great. I'll change in the bathroom."

They redonned their clothes from Friday, now clean and fresh, ran flimsy complimentary combs through their too-thick hair, and brushed their teeth. Every consumable or disposable amenity the hotel had provided them went in Cheryl's backpack, except for the bathrobes because Betty said that that was stealing.

Their bill was excessive because of the champagne, but Cheryl begrudgingly paid and told herself it was worth it because Betty really hadn't had a drink, ever, before the previous night.

"We have to stay at cheaper places in the nights to come," she told Betty.

"Okay."

Cheryl wished Betty would say something other than "Oh" or "Okay".

"Do you want to drive or should I?" she asked.

"You're probably a better driver," Betty said honestly. "Probably safer if you drive."

"Fine." The word sounded cold, unintentionally, but Betty didn't seem to care once they were back on the road.

She was smiling in the passenger's seat, staring contentedly out the window, until, periodically, she'd take out her phone and distinctly frown.

"What's everyone back in Riverdale saying?" Cheryl finally got up the courage to ask. A pit took form in her stomach as she hoped Betty hadn't noticed any of her contacts had been blocked.

"Nothing," Betty said with a scoff. "They're not saying anything."

"Oh."

Cheryl's thoughts turned to her own phone, which she'd left face-down on her bedside table. She wondered who was texting her, who had tried calling her, if she had more or fewer missed messages than Betty.

Selfishly, she wanted more, but she knew that that probably wasn't the case.

But only one contact mattered: Josie McCoy. She thought hungrily of Josie sending her a hundred anxious texts, worrying over Cheryl. She wondered if Josie was begging Cheryl to come home, if she was scared for her. If Josie missed her.

Cheryl hoped she was in pain.

It was an awful thought, she knew, but, God, it would be nice if it were true.

/

The sun was starting to set as Betty and Cheryl waltzed out of another gas station, whose interior was eerily similar to that of every other convenience store they'd been to in the past couple of days.

They had been travelling mostly in silence, making small talk only over breakfast and lunch, the sound of several different radio stations the only thing between them, which Cheryl blamed on her senseless inability to lay alone in the bed closest to the door.

It was getting dark again, and so Cheryl wondered if her reasoning would sound any more practical.

"Triple C says that you shouldn't drive for over eight hours and that you should take breaks at least every three hours."

"What?"

"Triple C says that you shouldn't drive for over—"

"No, I heard you. I'm just not entirely sure what you're insinuating."

"Well, we've been driving for ten hours. And we've only taken three breaks."

"So, we almost made the mark."

"Do you want me to drive?"

"You can do what you want." Cheryl tossed her cousin the keys.

"Great."

Back on the road, Betty making good time through the first frontier of Indiana and Betty dared to ask: "Did you sleep well last night?"

"Not especially," Cheryl said tensely, "which is to say no. I did not." Her fingers were all knotted together like they always were when she got nervous, red acrylic nails digging into her knuckles.

As if on cue, the streetlights flickered on and Betty switched the headlights on in response.

It was getting dark and the trees on either side of the road were turning into tangled masses of twisted souls, so Cheryl blurted out, "I couldn't be in my bed because it was closest to the door and if, say, a deranged murderer or an overzealous robber were to burst in, I would be murdered first and without any warning."

"What?"

"Stabbed. Or shot. Blood all over the sheets. No warning. No time to escape. Maybe strangled, who knows?"

"Oh."

They moved forward, always moved forward.

"That's messed up."

"What?"

"The bed thing."

"I know I should have woke you up, but I—"

"Not that, the fact that you were even thinking about that at all," Betty said, face all twisted in resolve. "I mean, that's just not something that's going to happen anywhere but _Riverdale_." She spat the name with such disgust, Cheryl would have thought she was someone else besides good-sweet Elizabeth Cooper. "That place is so wrong in every way. I never want to go back."

"Why not?" Cheryl asked. "I mean, besides all the usual reasons?"

To her surprise, Betty pulled over the car. "You're probably the last person I should be telling about this, but I did something…" she took a shaky breath. "I did something bad."

"We all have, Betty."

"No. Like, a monumentally awful thing that probably ruined lives." Betty's mouth was drawn in solemnity, and Cheryl held her breath. "The night before you found me in the bathroom, I…"

"Stop," Cheryl held a hand up, because she could tell Betty was going to say something truly awful. "Stop, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

"What?"

She wanted to keep living in a world where Betty was good and nice despite everything that had happened around her and everything she was made up of, so Cheryl repeated, "Do not tell me. Do not tell me the horrible thing you did. I don't want to know."

"Oh."

Betty pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road.

"We should stop soon," she whispered to the dark. "I'm tired."

"Or I could drive for a while," Cheryl offered. "We could make it to Illinois by morning."

"No, I want to sleep. In a bed. With blankets and pillows. And eat dinner."

"Next exit, then."

/

At dinner, Cheryl watched Betty's fork dance around an oversized hamburger. They were in a road stop diner that was horribly Pop's-esque, all neon lights on white walls and the smell of grease rising from the kitchen.

"Why would we go back?" Betty asked without looking up.

"To Riverdale?"

"To Riverdale. Where everything awful happened. Where, apparently, no one misses us?"

Cheryl's stomach turned. "They miss us."

Betty's fork scraped her plate with a screech.

"And we can't just run away," Cheryl restated, "because nothing good ever happens to runaways. And we can't hide. Everything will follow us."

"What do you mean?"

Cheryl thought about Thornhill and the night she'd doused it in gasoline and how quickly fire had spread from room to room, the moment the ancient glass windows blew out from outside. She thought about the moment her heart skipped a beat when her mother—her awful, abusive, now-prostituting mother—had rushed back inside. She thought about the first night in her bed at Thistlehouse. "Betty… We could burn every inch of Riverdale to the ground, the school and the diner and the trailer park and the streets that connect everything in between, and everyone would still be the exact same."

/

 **A/N:** _Hooray, Cheryl perspective! Leave me a review and I'll love you forever, as always._


	4. Existential Hide-and-Seek

"Finding somewhere cheap to stay will not be a problem, I see," Cheryl remarked. "God, how many people do you think were murdered in one of these allies?"

"Hopefully none," Betty said reluctantly. "This place here looks good. I mean, not good, but it looks like a place we can stay the night."

Cheryl pulled the convertible into the parking lot of a crumbly motel, its lights flickering from _motel_ to just _tel_. She out the roof up and they slipped out of the car, then stared at it for a second, the vintage model comically out of place in the sketchy parking lot. "I hope no miscreants steal my tires."

The inside of the motel was just as shoddy as the outside, the intentional color of the carpet indistinguishable through decades' collections of stains, the walls covered in cracks and chips and splotches of blood.

"One room, two nights," was all Cheryl said when she approached the desk.

As she and the grizzly man behind it exchanged rates, Betty turned to the open window, where in the dark streets a parade of the outlines four young boys was passing by, the boys shouting and growling at each other loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.

"Hey, shut the hell up, Jodes, you don't know what you're talking about!"

The smallest boy, who must have been Jodes, retorted with "Screw you, bitch! You know I'm right."

Betty watched as the largest silhouette gave Jodes a smack with a clenched fist, and the boys were all quiet as they carried on past the hotel.

Nice neighborhood.

"Can we get a second-story room?" Cheryl was asking from behind.

"Nope."

Cheryl grumbled, but Betty heard her take the keys from the desk before coming up to Betty. "Okay, here we go. Room sixteen."

"You can have the bed farthest from the door this time," Betty offered as they walked through the poorly-lit hallway.

Cheryl swung open the door and shrugged. "Thanks, but unfortunately, the bed farthest to the door is also the bed closest to the window, and someone could easily break in through there, so either bed has an equally high hypothetical mortality rate."

"Oh." Betty took the bed closest to the window.

"I'm showering," Cheryl said. "I'll be down the hall."

"Okay."

Cheryl left for the bathroom, and even from down the hall, Betty could hear the water start. She stared out the window, wondering if the boys she'd seen earlier were safe on the street, if they had a home they could return to.

She thought of her own house, not covered in a drug dealer's blood or tainted by the knowledge of her father's affair, or empty with the void Polly had left behind, or chilling with the knowledge of her brother lurking in the next room. It was just her house, quiet and tame and _home_.

For the first time, she wished she was home, desperately and painfully, wished her mother would come through the front door and start making dinner, wished her father would be there, too, wished she would be able to sleep in her own bed and wake up with her best friend next door and her boyfriend just a text away.

But what kind of friends stops texting or calling when you drop off the grid? Betty felt a pang of guilt for wishing they'd contact her; they'd sent a fair number of messages the day she'd ran, yes, and it probably wasn't fair to be so resentful, especially since she was the one who'd run away from them.

The motel didn't supply anything with which Betty could charge her phone, unlike the last place, and she considered stealing a wad of money from Cheryl so she could buy a charger or find a phone booth and call her mom or Veronica or Jughead, but the thought of going out alone at night was enough to stop her.

Plus, the water down the hall had stopped, to Betty's surprise, because it had been less than fifteen minutes and she didn't take Cheryl for a quick showerer.

"This motel must be run by waterbenders, because by all scientific accounts, water that cold should be ice," Cheryl explained as she slammed the motel door shut. "God, I'm having flashbacks."

"I'll shower in the morning, then," Betty decided.

Cheryl, still clad in the only outfit she'd brought, flopped on the bed. Betty snuck out to the bathroom to prep for bed.

When she got back, the ceiling fan was on, the room's stale air slightly less stale in its wake.

"Have you ever played existential hide-and-seek?" Cheryl asked, sitting up from the stiff and lumpy bed.

"Pretty sure that's what we've been playing for the past couple days."

Cheryl smiled. "No, it's a conversation game," she explained as Betty crawled under the stiff and scratchy covers. "Jason and I used to play it all the time. Kind of like twenty questions, all of them yes-or-no, but you keep asking until you find the other person. The premise is that there's a hider and a seeker and the hider can hide literally anywhere ever, no matter the size or whether it really exists or when it existed in time. Like, you could hide at Pop's or you could hide in Spider-Man's suit, or you could in the 'Hi, welcome to Chili's' bathroom, or you could hide inside of a person if you're so inclined, but I think that's creepy as hell."

"Okay, I have a hiding place."

"Really? You want to play?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Okay, let's do this." Cheryl cleared her throat. "Are you in the United States?"

"I am."

"Uh, okay, are you someplace real?"

"It's real."

"Okay. Are you in a place? As opposed to, say, a person or a thing."

"I am not in a place," Betty stated.

Cheryl deduced, using an impressive number of questions, that Betty was somewhere in Riverdale, only sometimes in the same place, and carried on someone's person.

"Oh, damn, you're hiding under Jughead's filthy beanie, aren't you?"

"You found me."

"I don't know if that's sweet or gross. I'm going to go with gross because I bet you all the cash in the backpack that he never washes it."

"It's sweet," Betty insisted, "and you're currently sleeping in the same clothes you've been wearing since Friday, so shut your mouth."

"You are, too," Cheryl snorted. "Okay, now you seek."

"Uh, okay, have I seen it in real life?"

"Nope."

"Is it in the States?"

"It will be, probably."

"So, it moves?"

"Oh, no."

"What?" Betty chewed her lip. "How will it be in the United States if it doesn't move?"

"Guess you'll have to figure that out."

It took close to an hour for her to figure out that Cheryl was hiding in Betty's future grave.

"You're sick," she grumbled.

Cheryl gave a sadistic laugh. "Maybe, but I win."

"What? This game has no winners."

"False, because _I_ am the winner."

/

"Well, you didn't lie about the water being cold," Betty said as she reentered the room the next morning, still dripping frigid but clean water. "Let's get out of here."

"Amen." Cheryl was already packed and ready to go, so Betty threw her few things into the backpack and they high-tailed out of the motel.

Despite its alien disposition, the car was unscathed in the morning light, still pretty and functional.

Mostly functional, Betty remembered, because they needed to get gas yet again before getting on the highway.

"Hey!" a voice called as they were stepping into the vehicle. "Ladies!"

Cheryl and Betty turned to face the band of boys from the night before, two of them perched on the curb behind the car, the other two standing in a cheesy pose, arms crossed and posture sturdy.

"What?" Cheryl barked as Betty sunk back.

"Do you girls work at the Slipper?"

"The what?"

"The Slipper." The group leader stepped forward. He couldn't have been more than thirteen; though he was stocky and tall, his freckled face was still strewn with undeveloped features and padded with baby fat.

"And I repeat: the _what_?" Cheryl prompted again.

"The strip club? Right in front of you?" The boy huffed and gestured behind him, where a small concrete building was labelled "The Slipper". "Genius bitch."

"You're, what, ten? Go home," Cheryl snorted.

"We're _twelve_ ," the big boy said as if it was very impressive. He stuck out a hand for Cheryl to shake, which she did with a roll of here eyes. "And we want to get into The Slipper."

"Well, good luck," Cheryl said with a wave of her hand. Betty wondered how she was so nonchalant. They were young, but all of them looked like sociopaths, beady eyes wide and wild on sunburnt faces, and they were encroaching around the car, two looming over Cheryl and two over Betty.

"Yeah, but they won't let us in because we're so young," the boy behind Cheryl said, and Betty saw her jump just slightly.

"Again, I offer the best of luck," Cheryl said stiffly.

"Bet we could get in behind you," the boy in front of Betty said with a grin.

"That's just not going to happen. Good day, perverts! Betty, get in the car."

Betty obeyed as Cheryl dropped into the driver's seat. She checked her pocket once, twice, then widened her eyes. " _Shit_."

"What?"

"Looking for these?" The boy who had been behind Cheryl said with a smirk, holding out the car's keys.

"Give those back." Cheryl sounded exasperated, but Betty her fist clench in her lap.

"You'll get them back when we're all in the club," the largest boy bargained.

Cheryl got out of the car, slammed the door, and made a grab for the keys.

The biggest boy threw them to the boy behind Betty, and Betty followed Cheryl's lead and grabbed for them.

The boys tossed them back and forth, a cruel game of monkey in the middle, and when one of the boys finally threw the keys to the smallest boy, Jodes, he didn't move Betty thought she could manage to grab it. She swept, but with an apologetic look on his face, Jodes threw the keys right to the biggest boy again.

Cheryl grabbed the big boy by the collar, and as he tossed the keys off again, he grinned maniacally. "Jesus, boys, why go to the club? This is hot as hell."

Cheryl shoved him and looked behind her for which kid had the keys. Betty realized dreadfully that she'd lost track of it, too. She scowled and finally asked: "All we have to do is walk in?"

"With us right behind you."

"Fine."

"Great. The joint opens at eleven."

"PM or AM?" Betty finally asked. "Because we have to be back on the road as soon as possible."

"AM." The biggest boy confirmed, combing his hair back with his hand. "Allow us to introduce ourselves. I'm Thad, that's Austin, Zach, and Jodes." Thad's face soured as he said Jodes' name.

"Thad, Austin, Zach, and Jodes?" Cheryl repeated. "God, you guys are going to be habitually crashing gaudy frat parties in ten years. Crashing, and not attending, of course, because you won't be smart or talented enough to get into whatever Podunk college town is hosting those hideous keggers."

Zach snorted. "And you guys must be so well-off, having ended up here."

"We're not stuck here like you guys; we're just passing through," Cheryl retorted.

"Yeah, we're travelling to the west coast," Betty said proudly. "We'll be in another state by the end of the night."

The boys exchanged a glance.

"Yeah?" Thad asked, eyeing his buddies. "What are you running from?"

"Everything," Betty remarked as Cheryl lied: "Nothing."

"Uh-huh," Austin mused. "Probably, like, abusive families or some shit."

"Hey!" Betty thought Cheryl was going to defend her family, but instead she said, "Don't say that word; you're like ten."

" _Twelve_ ," Austin repeated, "So, yeah, I know the shit word."

"Are you guys criminals?" Jodes asked timidly.

"No," Betty said too defensively as Cheryl lied again.

"We sure are!"

"Cheryl," Betty started, panicked. "We're not criminals, kid."

"Speak for yourself, Betty."

"Yeah?" Thad grunted. "What'd you do?"

Cheryl thought about that for a second before deciding she was an arsonist. For a moment, Betty wondered if it might be true; there was certainly a lot about the fire at Thornhill that had been kept quiet. Kevin had shared once at school that, according to his father, the whole house had been thoroughly doused in accelerants before the fire started. Plus, the timing was too strange. And why had Ms. Blossom been so badly burned while Cheryl made it out untouched?

"An arsonist? What did you burn down?" Thad pressed.

"A middle school filled with punks like you."

"You're lying!" Austin shouted.

"Yeah, I am. You really got me. Great job, Ace Attorney." Cheryl picked at her nail. "No outlaw would ever confess their crimes to a group of ratfink kids on the street. You would probably snitch on us anyway."

No, Betty supposed, an outlaw such as, say, a murder accomplice, would not disclose such information.

"We wouldn't snitch!" Austin protested.

"Did you kill anyone?" Jodes asked.

"Have you ever seen a dead body?" Austin interrupted.

Betty flinched and prayed no one saw. "No, I've never seen a dead body." Cheryl had been able to see through her lies before, and Betty had been repeatedly told she had an awful poker face, but the everyone was more interested in Cheryl, because she admitted she had.

"I've seen two," Cheryl said as though she was discussing the weekend weather. "But I didn't kill them, despite popular belief."

"Woah…"

"You're lying again," Zach accused.

"Maybe. Maybe not." Cheryl shrugged. "You'll never know for sure."

That upset the boys deeply, and they asked more questions, Betty relieved that they only seemed interested in rattling off morbid questions to Cheryl.

"Whose were they?"

"How did they die?"

"Were their eyes open or closed?"

"How much blood, how much blood, how much blood?"

"Where did you find the bodies?"

"Did they shit themselves before they died? I hear you shit yourself before you die! Did they shit themselves?"

Betty held her breath, trying hard to push out the image of the man's corpse on the floor of her home, of her mother covered in splotches of red.

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," Cheryl said coolly. "And don't say shit, you're like ten."

"Dude, they totally shat themselves!" Zach exclaimed eagerly.

"They did not!" Cheryl snapped defensively; although Betty wondered briefly if Jason had, having been tied up for over a week.

Three of the boys erupted in snotty laughter; Jodes cast his eyes at the ground.

"Did you know them?" Jodes asked quietly.

"I think it's almost eleven," Cheryl said in an equally quiet voice.

"We're gonna see some boobs!" Austin pumped a fist in the air.

"Classy," Cheryl grunted as she led them across the parking lot.

The inside of The Slipper had a techno beat pulsing dully throughout the club, the place just opened, slow and depressing, with a sparse selection of middle-aged alcoholics littered inside to match.

"They with you?" The man in front of the door asked. "Been trying to slip in for a while and—"

Cheryl waved a hand. "They're with us."

"Hmm," the man didn't take his eyes off of Cheryl and Betty, and the parade of awfully underaged kids trailing behind.

"Are you two new here?" Betty turned to face a woman in a seductive purple robe. She averted her eyes.

"Nope. Just passing through," Cheryl answered.

"Oh, well that's cool. It's slow this early." The woman stretched out a hand and said, "I'm Pony."

"Pony?" Cheryl didn't shake the hand, so Betty did. "What kind of a name is that?"

"A stripper name," Pony laughed. "I thought it would be funny. Like, riding the Pony."

"That would work better if you were a prostitute," Cheryl said bitterly.

Pony was silent.

"I'm Betty," Betty offered.

"Hi, Betty!" Pony smiled.

"That's Cheryl," Betty gestured. "She's always like this."

"I am not," Cheryl pouted. "I'm just upset because those kids dragged us in here and I want to leave." She whirled. "Where did they go?"

Pony gestured across the club, where the boys were enthralled with another girl putting on a show.

"Back in a flash," Cheryl growled as she started toward them.

"Where are you going?" Pony asked.

"To the ocean!" Betty beamed. "Pacific, because it's farther away from our town and it's just in general the superior coast, according to our culture."

"Cool." Pony played with her nails. She couldn't have been much older than Cheryl, her face still rounded and her stature small. "Where are you coming from?"

"Riverdale," Betty told her.

"Riverdale?" Pony thought on that for a moment. "The name sounds familiar. Is that the place with all the, uh, the murders?"

Betty nodded solemnly.

"Shit." Pony stared at the ground. "I'm sorry."

"Okay. They gave me the keys back." Cheryl reappeared, car keys looped around her fingers. "Let's get the hell out of here, Betty."

Betty looked back at Pony, who was giving Cheryl a strange look, probably trying to decide if she recognized her from any of the news stories on their small town.

"Can we go to lunch before we leave?"

"Sounds good," Cheryl agreed.

"Pony, do you want to come with us to lunch?"

"What?" Cheryl asked.

"I should work," Pony said politely. "I really need the money."

"For those sick boys? Believe me, they don't have any money," Betty insisted. "Please, let us buy you lunch."

"Betty…" Cheryl protested, but Pony either didn't notice or simply pretended not to and obliged.

/

"So, are you two going back home?" Pony asked through a mouthful of cheesed burger. They had returned to the small diner Cheryl and Betty had eaten at the night before. "Or are you heading out to the Pacific for good?"

"Just for the week," Betty said. "We're on spring break."

"Fun," Pony nodded. "What are you running from, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Actually—" Cheryl started, but resigned to a sigh when Betty gave an answer.

"It's kind of… complicated? Basically everything in that town just went bad and we want to get away."

"I get it," Pony nodded. "If memory serves there were two separate disasters, right? I watch the news a lot before work. A kid was killed and then some guy just lost it and tried to kill everyone he deemed unrighteous?"

"That's the gist," Cheryl said. "But, please, enough about us. How'd you end up stripping in this shitty place?"

"It's not bad, actually," Pony defended. "People pay well, but only when there are people in the club. If you decide not to go back to Riverdale, you two could make a killing working someplace popular."

"I have a brother in the business," Betty blurted out. "Not stripping, and not prostitution, exactly, but other things."

"Does he make good money?" Pony asked.

"Well, no."

"Then your family must know what it feels like to go a day unfed." Pony took another bite. "Which is why I appreciate this so much."

"Actually—" Betty picked around at her food— "just he does. Not the rest of us."

"Oh," Pony said. "I have two kid siblings to feed. We had to run away from home."

"Why, if you don't mind my asking?" Betty asked.

"I'd rather not talk about it." Pony stared Cheryl down again, then her jaw hung open. "Oh, God, that first kid was your brother, wasn't he? That's where I've seen you before?"

"Nice to know I've made national news," Cheryl grumbled.

"Oh, I don't mean to—" Pony started, but cut herself off. Her eyes dropped to her plate, clean save for some smears of ketchup and grease. "I really appreciate this, but I should head back to work. For real, I cannot thank you enough."

"Sure thing!" Betty chirped. "Let me just get the check and I can—"

"Oh, you don't have to give me a ride back. I can walk. Have to walk off all this food before I can work, in fact." She stood, looked apologetic. "Really, I can't thank you enough."

She skirted out of the diner with a jingle from the door.

"Why did you do that?" Betty demanded.

"Do what?"

"Make her feel so bad for asking questions."

"She's a big girl, she can handle it. Do you want a milkshake?"

"No, I don't want a milkshake."

"Good, because we don't have the budget for that after an unplanned third mouth to feed."

Betty stewed in anger for a moment. "Right, because we have the money to stay in a fancy hotel and drink a whole bottle of champagne ourselves, but we can't tip decently or help nice people we meet?"

Cheryl was staring into the backpack. "Well… now we can't."

"What?"

"Betty?" There was a horrified urgency in Cheryl's tone. "Betty, the money is gone."

"What? Are you sure?"

"It's a tiny backpack with literally one pocket, look!" Cheryl foisted the bag into Betty's lap, where Betty sifted through the toothbrushes and the soaps they'd stolen from the hotel.

"Oh my god." Betty's gaze shot back to the door, her hair swung wildly. It occurred to her briefly that she wasn't wearing it up. "Wait a minute, what if Pony stole it?"

"Duh, why else would she have left in such a hurry?"

"Okay, okay, this is fine," Betty reasoned, "we can just use the card in the car and then go back to the club."

Cheryl bit her lip. "No. I don't want anyone to track that card anywhere. It's just not smart. One of us can wait here while the other goes back to the club and gets the money back."

"Alone?"

"No one's going to kill someone in a club at one in the afternoon, Betty."

"Fine." Betty stood up. "I'll run back to the club and get the money back."

"Like hell you will!" Cheryl barked. "You'll probably end up letting her keep half of it!"

"Fine, you go."

Cheryl furrowed her eyebrows. "No, she's more likely to give it back to you. You weren't a bitch to her. Go."

"Back in a flash."

The afternoon was still and warm, sunlight reflecting off of the convertible, the only car in the lot. Betty wanted to run all the way to the club, sprint without looking back, and she didn't know why.

Instead, she shuffled down the sidewalk slowly, trying to figure why her first impulse had been to bolt, why she still wanted to run all the way down.

Betty stopped in her tracks halfway to the club.

 _How did I end up here?_

Why had she decided to come with? Why had Cheryl even wanted her along?

Betty groaned inwardly and tried not to think about it.

 _Get to the club, get the money, get back to Cheryl, get back on the road, get to the beach, get home._

 _Answer about a million questions from angry or (worse) apathetic friends and family. Go back to school. Get a degree. Go to college. Go far away. Work. Retire._

 _Die somewhere, go to hell,_ she thought as she pulled open the door to the club. _The end is nigh._

"Is Pony here?" Betty asked the man at the door.

"I didn't see her come back after she left with you two." He leaned inside, looked around, and said "I don't see her."

Betty cursed under her breath, walked in, combed through the club.

The middle school boys were counting ones for throwing. She was awful for letting them in, but the staff was worse for letting them stay.

/

"So, I've never dined and dashed before," Cheryl said. "It was easier than I thought it would be."

They were parked in front of the club, too nervous to turn the car on because it was low on gas, waiting for Pony to come back. To their horror, the card had also been swiped from the glovebox, so without paying or speaking, Betty and Cheryl had snuck out of the diner.

"I feel bad."

"We didn't really have a choice."

"We could have worked it off, washed dishes or something."

"I don't think that's a thing that restaurants do outside of the movies."

"Wouldn't have hurt to ask."

"Yes it would have." Cheryl sat up straight and pointed. "We would've missed the target."

The thieving woman was walking back up to the club, shoulders slouched.

"She looks like she feels bad, at least."

"Shut up." Cheryl threw the door open, stepped out and slammed it shut. "Hey!"

Pony's eyes went wide. "Shit, you scared me! What are you two doing here, shouldn't you be in, like, Montana by now?"

"I think you know why we're here." Betty stepped out of the car, too.

"God, I'm so sorry!" Pony blurted out before Betty and Cheryl could take a step closer. "It was so, so stupid, God, I'm sorry, I just had to buy groceries, _food_ , for my family!" She fumbled through her clutch and relinquished the small black card.

Betty and Cheryl exchanged a glance.

"And the cash?" Cheryl demanded, grabbing back her credit card. "Don't tell me you spent it all."

"C-cash?" Pony stammered. "I didn't take any cash, I really didn't. I just snuck this out of the glove box when you were driving me to the diner and I figured you would just call in fraud in a day or two, no harm done—okay, _minimal_ harm done—"

"You really didn't take the cash?" Betty asked, trying to be gentle, but getting angry and scared.

"I really didn't. I really didn't take the cash. And I really shouldn't have taken the card, God, I just stole from two minors whose lives are probably hell, I'm so sorry—"

"We don't want your pity. We just want our money." Cheryl grabbed Pony's clutch and wrought it open. "Damn, you really didn't steal it, did you?"

Pony shook her head.

/

Cheryl had assured Betty that she would make a decision in the morning: they were either going to press forward with the card, accept that the money was gone, or linger here until someone came to collect them. Who, Betty wasn't entirely sure. Probably Betty's mom. Maybe Penelope Blossom; but Betty couldn't see her charging down to Ohio for her daughter, no matter how angry. Maybe she would send someone.

In any case, Cheryl had been certain that if they used their card to stay in the motel, they'd be caught by morning. Apparently, her fear of her mother was mightier than her fear of murderers, so they were sleeping in the car, Betty swaddled in a blanket that had been in the trunk, Cheryl with her leather jacket draped over her front.

Betty ran through the trip in her head. They hadn't gotten very far. There was no way of knowing if that was for the best.

/

 **A/N:** _Really, I just wanted to name a character Thad. Because what a name. Also, to the guest that asked last chapter if this story is romantic: no, it's not. I mean, in theory, you could read into it however you want, but they are related and imo Cheryl's just being kind of a creep. Platonically._


	5. The Werewolf and the Alpha Bitch

Everyone stepped past the hearth and into the fire, one by one.

First Polly.

Then her father.

Then her mother.

Then her.

Her brother was left staring at the flames, his smirk highlighted by the deep shadows the glow carved in his face.

/

Betty woke up to the radio playing softly. A commercial for Taco Bell. The wind against the roadster. Cheryl breathing slowly, eyes open and trained at the ceiling. Boys laughing outside.

"Oh my god!" Betty jackknifed up, almost hit her head on the roof.

Cheryl leapt in response. "What the hell?"

"Oh my god those boys, those boys definitely took the money."

"Let's find that devilish brood. _Shit_ , we're stupid," Cheryl cursed. She was right, of course. In less than twelve hours they'd allowed their keys, cash, and card to be stolen. The only things they needed to survive.

Betty unbuckled her seatbelt, wondering why she'd felt the need to wear it while she slept, and looked up to find the boys walking toward them, massive slushies in hand.

"Dammit!" The biggest boy, Thad, shouted when he spotted the girls coming toward them. "What the hell do you want?"

"I think you know what the hell we want," Cheryl spat.

"Thad, let's just give it back," Jodes mumbled.

"Give it back? Hell, no." Thad turned to Cheryl and Betty. "We're gonna run away, too. Like you guys."

"Well, have fun without a car or a license," Cheryl snorted. "You're going to walk?"

"We're gonna hitchhike."

"You're going to get killed," Betty reasoned.

"Or raped," Cheryl added. "Or both. In either order."

"Not us!" Austin threw his empty slushie cup on the ground. "We're too smart for that. And, now, too rich."

"Smart rich people can still get murdered," Cheryl said pointedly. "But you're dumb and you're going to be poor after we take our money back and you will probably be dead before you even reach the highway."

"Like hell we would," Thad said. "We're going to Hawaii."

"How are you going to cross the ocean, genius?" Cheryl asked.

"That's what we were trying to figure out before you so-rudely interrupted."

"Are you gonna call the cops?" Jodes asked timidly, voice shaking.

" _Jesus_ , Jodes, shut the hell up!" Thad shouted.

"Yeah, we're gonna call the cops," Betty bluffed. Her phone was still dead and the police probably wouldn't take kindly to two runaway minors.

"You can't do that; you said you were criminals!" Zach reminded them.

"Yup. Which is exactly why you'd better give us back our cash before we kill you." Cheryl sounded dead serious.

There was a shift in the boys' attitudes.

"You wouldn't do that," Thad said finally. "We're kids."

"Maybe so, but you're also thieves who are in a bad neighborhood in the dead of night."

Thad's eyes went from Cheryl to Betty, trying to tell if the redhead was serious or not. Betty knew that she should have called Cheryl's bluff, let the boys know that they weren't actually in grave danger, but she thought about the ocean, about her family stepping into the fire, about the stars overhead moving slowly across the night sky.

"Don't test us," Betty said gravely.

"For real?" Thad giggled nervously. "For serious, you'd do something like that?"

"Give them the money back, just give them the money back!" Jodes begged. He was clearly trying not to sob.

"Just give us back what's ours." Betty folded her arms, Cheryl put hers on her hips. Betty wondered if she felt bad.

Jodes was choking back snot and tears now, the other three boys frozen with fear. Hopefully, they were smart.

"Give it back, Thad," one of the other boys chimed in.

Stiff silence, the leader of the boys weighing his options, Cheryl and Betty trying to look as tough as possible, like they could possibly kill four middle-school-aged boys on their own.

Like drowning Chuck Clayton. Like making herself bleed.

"Fine," Thad relinquished the money with a roll of his eyes. "Fine, take it. Don't wanna run around with these dumbasses anyway. If they're scared of a coupla girls. Screw 'em."

"Yeah, thanks, tough guy." Cheryl snatched back the cash. She turned to Betty and said, "We have to go. Now."

Car, gas, car, highway.

"We gotta bolt," Cheryl said as she pulled onto the freeway. "Gotta spread across this country like wildfire."

"Wildfire?" Betty drew her eyebrows. "I thought it was wild _flowers_."

"Spread like wildflowers?" Cheryl laughed. "That doesn't make any sense, Betty."

"Yeah it does," Betty argued. "Like, they pop up and grow everywhere. Spread like wildflowers."

"Like wildflowers."

/

The sun was coming up, the stars had faded long ago.

And then the sun began its rotation, the day began. Breakfast was old nutrition bars. The radio was consumed by exclusively commercials. For food, for fun, for roadside services. Existential hide-and-seek was played in the stead of music.

Betty hid on the old maple syrup sign.

Cheryl hid on Polly's farm.

Betty hid in the trunk.

Cheryl hid on Mr. Svenson's severed finger.

Betty hid in Josie's pussycat ears. Cheryl laughed really weirdly.

Lunch came from a drive-thru, hot and greasy. Betty was wondering how much sleep Cheryl was running on as the fourth semi-truck cut them off. Betty was considering drafting a will.

"Where are we?" Betty crumpled all of her garbage into the fast food bag, threw that into the back.

"We are almost in Montana. Making decent time, considering we lost a whole day yesterday."

"Gosh, what day is it?" Betty asked giddily.

"Uh… Tuesday?" Cheryl was mostly guessing, Betty trying to count off the days they'd been gone.

"Has it been that long? And also, has it only been three days?"

"Good lord, a song is playing!" Cheryl turned up the music, both the girls savoring the music as if they were desert explorers and it was fresh water.

/

"The claw machine calling my name," Betty mumbled.

They had stopped at a pancake house, its dim lights making them drowsy, both of them full of grilled cheese and sweet, fresh fruit, the sound of the road still humming in their ears. In the dark establishment, Betty couldn't take her eye off of the neon claw machine filled with cheap stuffed animals.

"Okay," Cheryl lazily popped a strawberry into her mouth. "Let me get quarters." She pushed herself out of the booth, up to the counter. "The trick is to use two people to get a grasp on both dimensions," she said when she returned, quarters weighing down her pockets.

"What do you mean?" Betty jumped up from the table and followed Cheryl to the big glass box full of prizes.

Cheryl took her hand and pressed four quarters, the price to play, into Betty's palms. "You stand at the front of the machine and operate the claw. And I stand off to the side and tell you if you should be going forward or backward. Back when Pop's had a claw machine, Jason and I cleaned house. Betty, go for that fox, it's sticking out the most," she pointed at an orange plush whose head was peeking out from a sea of its peers. "Let's go, we'll be great."

They were not. The first round, Cheryl cursed out the claw for being "illegitimately constructed, rigged, setting them up for failure on the first try."

The second attempt, Cheryl narrowed her eyes at Betty accusingly.

The third attempt, Betty told Cheryl that she'd told her to go too far backward.

The fourth attempt, both girls blamed the other without a shred of subtlety.

The fifth attempt and Betty pounded two fists against the glass and shouted "Jesus Christ!", as Cheryl demanded she try to be in charge of the claw.

Betty was determined to prove herself, though, and asked for one more try. On their sixth attempt, both were shouting at the machine to pick up the goddamn toy, keep it steady, hold it, hold it, hold it…

They erupted with cheer when Betty pounded the button to drop the fox into the slot.

"What should we name it?" Betty asked excitedly. She'd never won on a claw machine before, assumed winning one was like winning the lottery. The doll was almost two feet, a garish shade of orange, and clad in felt overalls, but it was a worthy prize nonetheless. "We should name her Vixen, because, like, the River Vixens!"

"What? No," Cheryl scoffed. "It would never be allowed on the team, it's dressed like a hobo. We should name it Jughead."

"Heck no!"

They were still arguing over the name of the toy when they checked into a hotel later.

"I'm just saying we shouldn't name it after anyone we know in real life," Betty said.

"I think Kevin would be honored. He'd appreciate the homage."

"Veto."

"Screw you." Cheryl looked out the window, seemed to be watching something. "Hey there's a movie house right across from us."

"Are they playing anything this late?"

"Yeah, it looks like they're playing some film called _Glass Door_ at ten."

"Ten? That's late."

"What, can't stay up past your bedtime?"

"I can do whatever I want."

"Want to see a film?"

Betty and Cheryl and their clothes were clean, situated, ready for another day tomorrow, although it was only nine and that felt too early to go to bed, despite the seventeen long hours that had passed since they got a proper rest.

"Fine."

The movie house was small and quiet. Jughead would have like it, would have spent an hour obsessing over the vintage movie posters that adorned the walls. The lights were golden, the velvet red. Tickets to see _Glass Door_ were $15, which Cheryl coughed up without complaint.

When the lights went down in the theatre, Betty sunk into her seat. It was more comfortable than the seat of the roadster, softer and a nice change from the same seat she'd been in for so many hours…

For so many days.

Again, Betty was struck by how monumentally stupid the past couple of days had been.

The movie flickered to life.

 _Glass Door_ was about a werewolf who went to high school. The high school had glass doors. The werewolf was pretty and nice behind those glass doors, and by night, she was hairy and covered in blood.

She killed people.

But she was also quite close to being popular.

Betty chewed on the stereotype of nice girl being unpopular, despite also being tremendously beautiful, and wondered if it was applicable to her life. The trademark Alpha Bitch didn't hate her, exactly; they were sitting side-by-side in a Montana movie house together. The other trademark popular girl was her best friend in the whole world.

So Betty decided the bitch clique was mostly movie trope.

Still, the movie played with it nicely.

By the end, Alpha Bitch was pretty tight with the werewolf, but the werewolf still had that miniscule issue of running off and murdering woodland creatures by night. Apparently, it was quite tiring because the morning after the dreaded full moon, werewolf and Alpha Bitch were sitting on the docks overlooking a nice lake.

Werewolf goes for a swim.

Werewolf is exhausted.

Werewolf starts to drown.

From the shore, Alpha Bitch thinks werewolf is waving at her, not signaling for help.

Werewolf drowns.

Betty cried. Cheryl didn't.

It was raining when they stepped out of the theatre, the streetlights turning to gold on the silver sidewalks.

"They relied too heavily on allegory. They didn't even the characters names and it didn't come off naturally," Cheryl said. "Also: too much color symbolism."

"Are you kidding?" Betty snorted. "I have literally never seen you wearing anything but red or black."

"Um, white?"

"Okay, I've only ever seen you wear like three colors. So, you have no room to comment on anyone else's overuse of color symbolism. And I liked the movie."

"I liked the part where the werewolf drowned."

"Of course you did."

"No, really. It was excellent. The other girl thought she was messing around and she was actually dying."

"I know."

"Excellent."

They walked in silence back to the hotel.

"In honor of that oversaturated film, I say we name the fox doll Fox Doll."

"What?"

"It doesn't have a name because it can represent anyone. Or at least anyone who identifies with fox dolls. Its name is Fox Doll."

"I hope Fox Doll doesn't drown."

"Fox Doll will be sitting on the pier waving at us as we slowly sink under the water."

/

Fox Doll watched calmly from the backseat as the roadster charged across the highway, Cheryl and Betty back to singing whatever the staticky radio allowed as America flew by.

They were close now, in Idaho, but too far north, rapidly making their way southwest.

"Betty!"

"Cheryl!"

"Want to stop for dinner?"

"Always."

"Sweet."

The restaurant where they stopped was a quaint pizza place that had red walls and red booths and red carpeting.

"It's so no one can see where they spilled the marinara sauce," Betty jested.

"It's so no one can see where they spilled the blood! This place is a mafia front," Cheryl joked back.

There was a rack of free newspapers by the entrance, and by force of habit, Betty grabbed one, fleetingly expecting it to be a copy of the Riverdale Register. Instead, the header read "Falls Post".

"Stocks are down," Betty announced.

"What?"

"Stocks are down!"

"What stocks?"

"I don't know. The paper just says that stocks are down."

"It doesn't say which ones?"

"I mean it does, but there's a lot of them and it doesn't say that any are up. Hence, stocks are down."

"Stocks are down. Do you know what you want to order?"

"Nope."

"Well figure it out before you fix the stock market; I'm starving, Cooper."

"Noted. Want to split?"

"I'm down. Toppings?"

Betty flipped to the third page and her blood went cold.

"Betty? Toppings?" Cheryl tried again.

"Cheryl, look!" Betty flipped the newspaper at her friend. Side-by-side pictures of the two from this year's picture day. _Riverdale Teens Missing: Reward._

"Don't freak out," Cheryl glanced back down at her menu. "It's a sidenote article in a miniscule town paper. No one's going to care."

"No one's going to care?" Betty tore the menu from Cheryl's perfectly-manicured hands. "What about our parents who think we're _missing_ and who are offering a reward?"

"They don't care about us," Cheryl said with surprising ferocity. "Don't think about it, Betty."

"My mother hasn't even texted me since Saturday. Why wouldn't she? Why wouldn't she call or… Why wouldn't she? Why would she assume we're missing? Why would she offer a reward instead of just—"

"Are you, like, hyperventilating?" Cheryl cut her off. "Because I'd offer you some water but they haven't even gotten us water yet. The service here is subpar."

"Cheryl, I need to call my mom."

There was a flash of anger in Cheryl's eyes. "Betty, it's not a big deal."

"It's a huge deal, Cheryl." Betty stood up. "I need to call my mom. I will be back, I will be back soon, can I get some money for a phone charger?"

Cheryl sat for a moment, openmouthed. "I… Betty at least eat dinner first, we'll buy a charger after."

Betty sat and was struck by a sickening wave of guilt, wondering whether her mother had gone to the police (the police they'd been trying so hard to avoid lately) and whether she thought Betty was hurt and if her mother was safe alone in the house with Chic and what the house was like at that very moment…

/

"There's a hotel—"

"No." Betty pointed to a corner store across the street. "We're going there first. I need to call my mom."

"Jesus, Betty, are you six years old?"

"Cheryl," Betty pleaded. She was cold and queasy and felt like crying. "Please."

More hesitation. Then: "Fine." Cheryl handed Betty a twenty and Betty bolted across the street.

Later, in the hotel room, Betty collapsed onto the bed and waited anxiously after plugging the phone in. She ground her teeth as it signaled it needed more time to charge, dug her nails into her palms when it finally lit to life.

 _Texting, Mom, Contact Info—_

 _Unblock caller?_

"Unblock caller?" Betty repeated aloud.

"What?"

"I… I had my mom blocked."

"Weird."

"'Weird'?" Betty pounded the unblock button and stood up. "Did you do that?"

"Why on earth would I do that?"

"Did you block my mom?" Betty looked through her other contacts. Veronica, Archie, Jughead, Kevin. All of them had been silenced. " _Christ_ , did you block everyone?"

Cheryl wasn't saying anything, which Betty took as an admission of guilt, anger welling up inside of her, hot and quivering. She didn't wait for Cheryl to respond. Her phone had 20% battery and Betty just wanted to contact her friends, her family. Their texts and missed calls were rushing in now at an overwhelming speed.

Betty pushed past Cheryl and made her way down to the street corner below.

Logically, she knew she should call her mother first, but she was afraid to face all that blood, so she drew a breath and gave herself one sweet moment before pressing call.

"Betty? _Oh my God, Elizabeth Cooper, where the fresh hell have you been_?"

"Mom, I am so sorry. I've been on the road with Cheryl and… my phone hasn't had any battery until now." She has no idea why she's protecting Cheryl, maybe a dead phone is just easier to explain.

"Betty, you are coming home right this instant. I don't even know where to start—"

Over the sound of her mother fuming, the rush and the swell from the highway found Betty's ears through the black night sky.

The sound of moving, of going somewhere.

"I can't come home just yet," Betty said sternly. "I just need you to know that I'm alive and I'm safe and I'm fine."

"You're not coming home?" Her mother's heartbreak was audible; Betty felt cruel. She could picture her mother's face, crestfallen, and upstairs her empty, unmade bed.

"I'll be home by the end of break," Betty promised. "And I'll be safe and I'll go back to school and come home and everything will go back to normal. But for now… I just can't, Mom, I just can't…"

As her mother cooed comforting words and desperate promises into the phone, Betty pictured her feet sprouting roots, long and slender. Roots that cracked through the sidewalk and into the dirt below, all of them folding in on each other.

A text from Jughead pulled her out of her thoughts. It said, simply: _Betty, please.._

Her heart sang. "Mom, I have to go. I love you. I'll stay safe, I promise and I'll be back soon. Goodbye."

 _Click_.

/

 **A/N:** _WHO ELSE IS EXCITED FOR NEW EPISODE AND HOPEFULLY CHONI TO NITE!?_


	6. Intermission

Riverdale was quiet.

That was the most unnerving thing. Riverdale was quiet for the first time in a long time and all anyone could do was speculate as to where Betty and Cheryl had gone.

The story the first day they were gone was that they'd gone to spend a night in what remained of Thornhill and that, ominously, they hadn't come back.

Sunday, Betty and Cheryl had eloped, were living out the story Polly and Jason never got to. Veronica couldn't help but laugh at that one.

Monday, Veronica heard that Penelope Blossom had killed Cheryl and Betty had somehow seen too much and had to run. That one was unnervingly possible, and Veronica called Betty every half hour. Every half hour, she got a dial tone.

Tuesday and Cheryl had taken after her father and killed Betty, Betty buried somewhere far away and Cheryl on the run from the police.

Of course, all these stories dismissed the facts—the albeit questionable facts—that had been floating around town.

On Tuesday night, Veronica hosted Archie and Jughead and Kevin at the Pembrooke to try to formulate an action place.

Clearly, Betty wasn't coming home on her own.

"What do we know?" Archie asked. He was pacing, clearly unnerved by the seeing Betty's empty bedroom night after night.

"Betty and Cheryl are missing. And Betty claimed Saturday night that they were on the road together. But there's no way she'd actually just up and leave with Cheryl," Jughead spat out Cheryl's name with disdain.

"Has anyone heard from either of them since Saturday?" Archie asked.

Silence.

"No one's heard from Cheryl at all," Kevin began. "And nothing from Betty since Saturday night. But Ms. Blossom told my dad that her credit card was used Sunday night. In Ohio."

"What?"

"Ohio?"

"Holy shit, they really did take off together," Jughead breathed.

"What was it used for?" Archie asked.

"Groceries," Kevin answered. "Fruit, cereal, cold cuts. A lot of groceries."

"What, are they planning on staying in Ohio?" Archie demanded.

"No, hell no. Betty promised she'd be back," Veronica reasoned.

Everyone checked their phones again, absently sent another plea for Betty to reach out to them.

They sat back, collectively holding their breath, trying to fathom where their best friend could be, trying think up something they could possibly do.

And then, as if someone answered their very prayers, a phone went off.

Everyone fumbled to life, dug in their pockets, checked their screens. It was Jughead's.

"It's Betty," he said shakily. "It's Betty!"

"Well, answer it, dumbass!" Veronica said excitedly.

 _Click_.

"Hello? Betty?"

"Put her on speakerphone," Kevin whispered.

Jughead obeyed.

"Jug. Hi. It's good to hear your voice." Betty.

"The very same to you, Cooper," Jughead started. "Are you—"

"Betty, are you okay?" Veronica called to the phone.

"Juggy, was that Veronica?" Betty asked.

"It was. Sorry. We're all here, actually. At the Pembrooke. I'm with Kevin and Archie and Veronica. What's, uh, what's happening here, Betty?"

"Okay…" Betty exhaled on the other end; Veronica could tell she was choosing her words carefully. "Okay, on Friday night, I was freaking out because of all the… _stuff_ … that's happened lately. In Riverdale, in my family, hell, in my own head. And then Cheryl Blossom drives up and asks me if I want to get away and I realize I really can just get up and drive away from the town of Riverdale and it— It just sounded really appealing and I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize," Jughead said immediately. "We're not mad, we're just worried about you."

"No, I know, I'm just so sorry to put you guys through any stress."

"Why didn't you answer our texts and our calls earlier?" Archie sounded hurt. "It's been days."

"It's just been hard keeping my phone battery charged. I only just bought a charger to use now."

"Where are you?" Veronica asked.

"Just on the road—"

"No, I mean, like, where _exactly_?"

"Idaho," Betty confessed.

" _Idaho_?" everyone in the Pembrooke chorused.

"Betty, where in Idaho? Where exactly? What's the town, the address?" Veronica pressed.

"Why?"

"Because we need to know you're safe," Veronica said. "And also, of course, I'm flying out to get you."

"What? No," Betty stammered. "I can't let you do that. I'll be back soon, I promise. And—"

"Betty, you're obviously not well," Jughead said quietly. "Come home and we can talk and figure everything out together."

"Just tell me where you are," Veronica repeated.

There was silence, and then: "I'm at the Two Pence hotel in Idaho. And I'm safe and I'm fine and…" Betty was breathing hard on the other end; Veronica could barely stand it.

/

The nice thing about being a Lodge is that Lodges can do whatever they want whenever they want.

Boarding a last-minute plane to Idaho was one of those things not restricted to Veronica Lodge. Her mother had asked to come, but Veronica boarded alone in the end. Whether Hermione Lodge's desire to come with to find Betty had stemmed from wanting to keep the girls safe or from wanting a slice of the reward money Alice Cooper and Penelope Blossom had put forth, Veronica didn't know. In any case, Veronica figured her friend was more likely to talk to her one-on-one, so her mother obliged and bought a single plane ticket to Idaho.

Hopefully, they'd order at least two for the flight back to Riverdale.

The plane ride was agonizingly long, Veronica forgetting to breathe the stale cabin air and wondering if perhaps Betty had taken one of Veronica's lungs with her when she strode out of town with Cheryl Blossom.

The woman next to Veronica, who made casual small talk about the weather and her family back in Idaho, offered Veronica her pretzels and Veronica accepted.

She gratefully sucked on them as she recalled the last time she'd seen Betty. It had been far too long ago. At the time, Veronica had chosen to blame that on all the time the SoDale project and the battle versus the South Side had been costing her, but now she realized that Betty had probably been going through her own ordeals at the time.

She should have talked to Betty long ago.

Her stomach twisted with guilt and sodium as the plane finally began its descent.

/

The Two Pence hotel was aptly named; it was nothing fancy and certainly not a place a Lodge would be caught dead seen in. From outside in the moments before dawn, the hotel sank back into the sky, its only light spilling flickering yellow across the entryway. As she got closer, she saw that the single beam of light was swarming with moths and the interior of the hotel was coated with a modest layer of dust and grime.

The air was warm and stiff.

"I'm here to see a Betty Cooper," Veronica said to the middle-aged woman working behind the desk. "Can you tell me what room she's in?"

"We're really not supposed to disclose that information." Veronica had hoped a place like this didn't care about such rules, but she withdrew and called Betty.

"Hello?" Betty's voice was groggy with sleep and tinged with annoyance. "Who's this?"

"It's Veronica. I'm at the hotel."

"What?" Betty hissed, fully awake now. "You flew all the way to Idaho?"

"Of course. Come to the lobby."

"Veronica—"

"Come. To the lobby," Veronica repeated sternly and hung up. Her stomach was still in knots, she realized.

But Veronica had never felt such a flood of relief than when she spotted Betty's figure emerge from the hall in a cheap white robe, blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders.

Without thinking, Veronica rushed across the lobby and threw her arms around her best friend. Betty recoiled, tensed for a moment, then reciprocated.

"B, love, please tell me everything. Again."

Betty sighed, long and long-suffering. "Let's go for a walk."

The streets were damp; it had rained at some point when Veronica was on the plane, watching grey clouds below her. The city smelled of wet earth and fuel emissions, and Veronica waited patiently for Betty to start talking.

"Okay. So, I've been going through a lot lately. With the aftermath of the Black Hood. And my parents splitting up or whatever they're doing. And Chic. And…" Betty trailed off. "It's just really a lot and I was going crazy. I didn't want to stay at home or in that cursed town for a whole week have to deal with all that."

Veronica's lips trembled with a thousand questions, and she couldn't ignore a feeling of betrayal that her best friend had left town with the likes of Cheryl Blossom and not Veronica herself. She swallowed all that and just said, "I understand."

"The Black Hood… when he 'picked' me… Veronica, he said some awful things to me. Made me do awful things. And I don't even know who I am anymore. And if Chic is plotting something or if he's not dealing with everything inside of him in a good way… Veronica, I don't want to be like him. I don't want to be like the Black Hood. And I left because Cheryl approached me, but I don't know why. And I ended up getting in the car and driving with her all the way to Idaho."

"Cheryl. She's back in the hotel room?"

"She is. Sleeping."

"Girl, come back with me. I'll buy us plane tickets, call an Uber, we can get to the airport, and we can be back in Riverdale by this afternoon—"

"I don't know, V." Betty pawed at the ground. "I want to go home so, so badly. But I also don't. And I want to keep going with Cheryl. But I also don't. I want to be everywhere and nowhere all at once and I just don't know what's happening."

Veronica took Betty by her clenched hands. "Okay, Betty listen to my proposition: We go back to Riverdale. And we get you to talk to someone. And we can catch up over a dozen milkshakes and fries at Pop's. Just us, B and V."

"Come with us," Betty offered on impulse.

"Pardon me?"

"Come with us! We're driving up to the ocean just to see it. And you can come! Cheryl would be fine with it, I'm sure. She likes you. Probably more than me, at least. You should come with!"

"No, Betty," Veronica shook her head. "I can't just run off. I have things to do back in Riverdale. With my parents. And I am not getting sucked into that whirlpool of vile rumors."

"What are they saying about us?" Betty sounded almost amused.

"It doesn't matter." Veronica turned and took Betty by the hands. "I'm not leaving you, Betty. I'm not letting you leave."

Betty gave a wavering smile. "Thank you."

They made their way back to the hotel room in silence, not sure what to say, Veronica already tapping on her phone to get tickets. Betty swung back to the room, promised she'd talk to Cheryl about coming back, and then Veronica was alone outside, waiting. She leaned against the building, not wanting to go inside for the filth of the hotel would cramp her aesthetic. The exterior, though, at daybreak, streaked with rain, was more fitting the image of Veronica Lodge.

She was casting her eyes back and forth across the street, three tickets in her cart, waiting for Betty to see if she'd need the third, when she got a text from Betty.

 _I'm so, so sorry, V._

"She better freaking not have," Veronica yelled to her phone before storming inside.

"Did Betty Cooper check out?" Veronica asked the woman behind the counter.

"Just moments ago," the woman confirmed.

A thousand hot regrets rushed through her heart and into her blood. All Veronica could do was put her head back and try not to ruin her Christian Dior mascara.

/

 **A/N:** _So this chapter was sort of a break from Cheryl and Betty's storyline to see how everyone else in Riverdale is reacting to their disappearance. Mostly they just can't keep their mouths shut._

 _Also: wow. Those last two episodes... all the Cheryl/Toni... I'm floored and elated._


	7. Are You Even Sorry?

Cheryl didn't say anything to Betty when she reentered the hotel room, eyes glossy and breath uneven. If she had been a better person, if she was anything like her late brother, she would have said something, asked what happened.

But she wasn't, so instead she let Betty float in and out of the shower and into bed, the TV playing muted in the dark all the while.

 _Stupid piece of shit_. She should have at very, very least apologized for cutting Betty off from everyone back in Riverdale. Cheryl knew this, but her mouth made no move to express any sort of contriteness.

The silence was unbearable, and Cheryl thought it pointed until she realized Betty's breathing was long and heavy. So, they wouldn't talk until morning.

Cheryl eased her head back. As per usual, she couldn't sleep and instead just trained her eyes on the ceiling.

Even in the dark, most ceilings look perceptibly different. This one was stained and cold. She knew she wasn't under her own roof, neither Thornhill nor Thistlehouse. She wasn't anywhere at all familiar, not Veronicas room at the Pembrooke or Josie's house or…

Cheryl realized she didn't actually have any other friends.

She was almost asleep, enough so that she was thinking of nothing, when Betty's phone jolted, casting blue light onto the ceiling. It was promptly answered by a groggy Betty.

"Hello?" Cheryl heard her whisper into the dark. "Who is this?"

Betty threw off her sheets and shuffled out the door. Cheryl rose, too. Anxiety flared in her chest. Something was wrong.

Or, more wrong than usual.

She paced for a few moments, trying to predict what terrible thing was about to happen, scolding herself for making Betty hate her.

Cheryl crept to the window overlooking the entryway to see Betty walking out with Veronica Lodge.

"Goddammit."

The two figures continued across the street, out of Cheryl's sight.

Everything stopped. All Cheryl could feel was something yanking at her chest, hot and angry and maddening. Her hands were shaking and she thrust them up onto her face with as much force as she could muster.

 _Sabotage everything._

Whether it was an accusation or an order, Cheryl didn't know, but she took hold of her unwavering fury and charged out the door, into her car.

The buzz from the highway was echoing in her ears, and she wanted to drive fast, but she also knew better than to leave Betty behind. Even if Betty was going to end up leaving Cheryl behind.

Still, she wasn't moving fast enough, so she pulled off onto an empty road and floored the roadster. It begrudgingly lurched forward and flew across the street. She didn't know where she was going or where she was going to stop, but the passing street and the wind blowing her eyes dry was enough for the moment.

Again, her brain conjured p a thousand images from back in Riverdale: Jason's corpse, the hole in his head, her father at the end of the rope, Nick St. Clair's smug face, Betty crying in the bathroom, the bullet hole in Jason's head again…

Cheryl squeezed her eyes shut.

 _Bang!_

Cheryl's face hit the steering wheel, felt something in her nose split. She threw her eyes open, heart in her chest, and prayed she hadn't accidentally hit anybody.

No. She'd simply driven off the road. Like an idiot.

Cheryl made no move to get her car out of the gutter. Instead, she cried until her nose bled.

She was gasping for breath when she realized that Betty would (hopefully) be back to the hotel at some point. Still so filled with dread that it made her every muscle sing with pain, still trembling from anger, Cheryl manipulated the car back onto the road, cursing at herself every second.

On the drive back, the noises of the distant highway all sounded like muted static playing from a faraway room. The sky above wasn't free space and fresh air but the surface, Cheryl and her car and the empty road all underwater. Drowning.

Cheryl took a sharp breath as she tried to push out the image of her father and that gun.

Static.

The car pulled into a spot in front of the hotel. Cheryl wondered if it was driving itself; it certainly didn't feel like she was driving it, controlling her own hands or feet. Still, she managed to put the thing in park and, with a pit in her stomach, turned to face the hotel. Betty with Veronica.

Cheryl scoffed away a touch of jealousy.

And who should be waiting outside the doors to the Two Pence but Veronica herself. Of course.

Cheryl and Veronica liked each other, in theory, but they forgot that all too often. In truth, if Cheryl had approached Veronica, the latter would have offered comfort and support and kind words, as she almost certainly had with Betty. Hell, she probably would have even coughed up a plane ticket home.

Veronica was nice like that.

But jealously and fear and self-loathing were still rattling around Cheryl's head like a child furiously scribbling dark shards of crayon across a color-saturated paper. So, Cheryl found a back entrance that wasn't locked.

Betty was back in the hotel room; she looked anxiety-ridden and sick.

"Cheryl!" Betty breathed when Cheryl pushed open the door. A look at her bleeding nose. "What happened to you?"

Cheryl wiped the trail of blood, trying to get it off but just smearing it over her mouth. "What happened to _you_? You just took off. And you look awful."

"Veronica came out. She wants to take me home. I told her I'd come."

Cheryl's heart leapt. "Oh."

"Yeah. And I thought I wanted to, at least a little bit, but I'm really not so sure now. We're so close."

"Go tell her that."

"She's not leaving without me. And there's no way she's coming with us."

Cheryl bit her lip, tasted the blood. "There's a back door to this hotel."

"What?"

"We check out, take the back entrance, and we're back to Kerouacking it before Veronica even sees what's happening."

"Jack Kerouac was a racist and a sexist. And that would be cruel."

"Okay, you're right about Kerouac. But I don't care about Veronica right now," Cheryl said earnestly.

Betty was quiet. Then she grabbed the bag and they snuck up to the front desk.

/

Betty hadn't been particularly sociable on the drive down to California, but she was in the car and Cheryl considered that a win. She couldn't tell if Betty was still angry about her contacts being blocked or if she felt bad about leaving Veronica at the Two Pence, and Cheryl couldn't decide if it was better for Betty to be mad at herself or at Cheryl.

Because, technically, it was Cheryl's idea to ditch the pearl-wearing rich girl. So in any case, Betty was probably manufacturing a grudge against Cheryl.

"We're in the home stretch," Cheryl ventured, trying to gauge Betty's resentment based on her response.

Betty gave a straightforward answer. "I'm still mad at you, Cheryl."

"I know. I had no right to do… what I did. But everyone else has no right to guilt us into coming back. They don't get it."

"I don't even get it," Betty huffed. "I should have gone back with Veronica. I feel awful. I don't want to be in Riverdale, but I don't want to be here, either and we just left her."

"Look, I said I was sorry," Cheryl said childishly.

"No, actually, you didn't."

"Well, I'm sorry," Cheryl said, though every word was more bitter than the last.

"Yeah, for what?" Betty challenged.

"What are you talking about? You know for what."

"Do I?" Betty shifted in her seat and Cheryl prepared to feel very bad about herself, insults pulsing at her tongue. "Are you sorry for cutting me off from all my friends? For making me think they didn't care about me? Or for being an unrelenting bitch to me since freaking elementary school? Are you sorry for the way your brother estranged my sister from me and my family?"

Cheryl quivered with directionless anger.

"Are you really sorry, Cheryl? Are you actually sorry for anything? Because it seems to me like all you—all you _Blossoms_ do—is ruin things. Your father causing such a mess through the whole town, starting everyone's problems. Your mother coming after my father, trying to take our family apart, trying to finish what Jason started. All you do—"

"I can't drive while I listen to this," Cheryl growled.

"Then pull into a rest stop because I have a lot more to say," Betty demanded.

"No, you don't."

"I do, actually."

Cheryl didn't want to let Betty keep spitting slander, but Cheryl could tell she wasn't going to stop. If Betty was going to keep throwing accusations, Cheryl figured she might as well be focused enough to get in a word edgewise. Trying to drive was a disadvantage. She pulled into the exit advertising a rest stop, the place dirty and empty like most everything as of late.

"Okay," she stood and slammed the car door shut. "If I'm so vile, why did you come with me? Why stay with me?"

"Why did you even invite me?" Betty was standing, too, pacing madly across the grass. "Am I just the next thing you Blossoms want to destroy? Me and the ties to everyone important to me? My friends, my family?"

"God, you and your family," Cheryl scoffed. "Don't get so high and mighty on me. Don't forget that we are related. You talk so much shit about the Blossoms, but don't you forget that you are one, Betty." That was her answer.

"Like hell I am, Cheryl."

"You are, actually. In your blood. You can't run from it any more than I can, Cooper."

Betty took a deep breath, fists clenched so hard her knuckles were white. She opened her mouth to retort, but was cut off.

"Hey!" A man emerged from the rest stop, and both Cheryl and Betty whirled.

"What?" Cheryl spat at the man, who was greying and tall and tan. Neither of them were in the mood to give anyone directions.

"Are you two in trouble?"

"What do you mean?" Betty asked shortly.

"You're those missing kids, aren't you?" The man stepped farther toward them. "Those missing kids from back in Riverdale?"

The name of their hometown made both girls freeze. Cheryl's anger melted into fear as they exchanged a glance.

"Maybe so," Betty said cautiously.

"Oh, oh, damn." The man squirmed. "I was just coming up from Greendale. Heard about you. And the way you just vanished one night. Do you need help getting back? I can phone your parents."

"That would be excellent." Betty stopped forward.

"Don't do this," Cheryl said.

"Come on," the man from Greendale said.

"Oh, I'm not coming." Cheryl folded her arms.

"Come on," he repeated."

"No, I'm not going back to Riverdale."

"Aren't you worried about your parents?" The man from Greendale asked.

"No. And it's mutual apathy," Cheryl retorted.

"Really? Because there's a reward out for you," the man from Greendale was intensifying and apprehension was taking root in Cheryl's stomach.

"Don't go with him, Betty."

"I don't even know why I'm here, Cheryl. And I have to apologize to Veronica."

"Come on," the man from Greendale repeated.

"Again, I refuse." Cheryl opened the car door. "Look, you have a nice trip home, Betty," she said disdainfully.

"There's a reward out for you," the man from Greendale urged. "Clearly someone's worried about you."

Cheryl got in the car, revved the engine.

"Hey!" The man from Greendale had suddenly gone furious. "Don't you dare drive away from me, bitch."

Jesus. Cheryl hesitated; if driving away hadn't meant leaving Betty stranded at a rest stop with a vaguely unhinged drifter, Cheryl would have taken off without a second thought. But Betty was standing wide-eyed behind the man, so all Cheryl could think to do was give her tentative glance.

"You best come back to Riverdale with me, Miss Cheryl Blossom," the man from Greendale said, stepping closer to the car as Cheryl leaned forward to put the roof up.

He saw her reach for the switch, pulled a knife, and Cheryl's blood went cold.

"Step out of the car," he said slowly and evenly.

Cheryl was frozen.

Suddenly, the man toppled and his head hit the side of the car with a thud.

"What the hell?"

Betty, standing behind the groaning man from Greendale, had kicked him hard in the back of the knee.

Go team Cooper.

"Betty—"

The man fumbled back to his feet, grabbed at Betty, who stumbled backward.

Cheryl pulled herself out of the car, rushed up to the man, and pulled him away from her.

There was a brief struggle, the man from Greendale trying to keep off both girls, who were hitting at him with knees and fists and feet as his clawed at them.

Betty let out a cry of pain, tumbled into the grass, and the man pulled his knife.

Cheryl lunged forward and grabbed his knife-wielding arm, dug her nails in so he dropped the weapon. For Betty to pick up.

The tables had turned and the man from Greendale realized this, pulled away.

"I just need the money, I just need the reward money, I just really need the money," he huffed, winded.

Cheryl pushed him away. Betty was less relenting, fury still flickering behind her eyes.

"You stay away from me!" she growled, held the knife to him like she was willing to cut him.

"Betty…" Cheryl started, but she was no saint herself and made no move to intervene.

"Get away," Betty demanded.

"Give me my knife back."

"No. Leave."

"Give me my hunting knife back, I need that!"

"To threaten kids?"

"It's mine!" The man from Greendale stepped forward, made a grab. Betty swung the knife. Hard.

Everyone shouted in cacophony as ribbons of red flew through the air, Betty angrily, Cheryl surprised, and the man in complete agony.

The man from Greendale fell to the ground, clutching both hands to his bleeding face. Time to bolt.

"Betty, let's go!" Cheryl grabbed Betty by the arm, but she pulled away and stepped forward.

Gave the man from Greendale a hard kick.

Another.

"Betty, we need to leave," Cheryl said urgently over the sound of the man's howling. "We need to leave now!"

/

There was blood on Betty's shirt and it made sitting in the booth across from her almost unbearable, the rusty red splotches calling to Cheryl's eyes like sirens.

Cheryl couldn't stop thinking about how Betty had kept hitting the man from Greendale, even after he'd fallen to the ground, face bleeding and wailing in pain. Cheryl was almost angry about it, though it was quite possible that she'd have done the exact same thing if she'd had the knife.

But Betty was supposed to be better than Cheryl. She was _Betty Cooper—_ everyone's best friend, the girl next door—and Betty Cooper wasn't supposed to hurt people. She was supposed to be the one to smile at everyone in the halls and give freshmen directions to their homeroom and tip diner waitresses almost 50% and invite the less fortunate to lunch. She wasn't supposed to make anyone bleed or scream. Other people could do that. Not Betty Cooper.

 _Hypocrite_ , Cheryl scolded herself as she picked around a salad.

The girls were in a tired old restaurant mere blocks away from the beach, people coming in and out with saltwater in their hair. They were quiet, listening to dishes clang in the kitchen and a lone ceiling fan whir overhead. Cheryl hadn't actually been hungry when she suggested they stop for lunch, but she didn't want to get to the ocean just yet.

She didn't really want to get to the ocean at all.

Not just because it meant they'd have to head home afterward, but also because large bodies of water were rather daunting to her as of late.

Drowning, disappearing, corpses halfway underwater with bullets in their heads…

Cheryl sighed, tried to make it inaudible, but Betty looked up at her, jaw skewed in a bitter scowl, eyes icy.

Cheryl wasn't good at being in fights with people. She'd been raised on poison; she was good at winning the upper hand in power struggles, at cutting people off entirely, destroying them socially, hurling insults at them, but not at repairing anything.

She racked her brain for a time she'd fought with Jason; she knew it had happened, but she couldn't recall over what or show they had made it better.

Not that Cheryl really wanted to make this better; the man's shouts of agony were still ringing in her ears and his blood was still staring at her from Betty's powder pink shirt.

To say nothing of the awful insults Betty had spat before the man from Greendale.

They were still heavy on Cheryl's mind. She knew her father was guilty. Her mother was certainly not doing any favors in repairing the Cooper family. Her brother… He was mostly innocent, Cheryl had decided that long ago.

And Cheryl was probably much guiltier than he had been.

"We're so close to the ocean now," Betty said darkly, seemingly to no one.

"Yep," Cheryl said tensely.

"Why did we stop for lunch? We're so close and I'm not even hungry."

"Well, I am," Cheryl said, though her full plate suggested the contrary.

"Forget this," Betty said and dropped her fork. "I'm going for a walk. I'll come back here when I'm done."

"For real?"

"Yeah, for real. I need some air. And I actually want to see the ocean."

"We can go in like fifteen minutes, Betty, just let me—"

"I'm taking a walk." There was no question in Betty's tone.

"Fine." Cheryl shrugged, trying to look annoyed. Of course Betty didn't want her company at the final destination, after all this way.

Well, screw her.

/

 **A/N:** _To anyone who's actually reading this, I'm seriously slowing down on my writing so the gaps between chapters are getting a little longer. Sorry about that. Trying to pick up my motivation again (I wrote the first four chapters in like one week… I wish I could always be that inspired lmfao.)_


	8. At the Edge of the Ocean

Screw her.

Cheryl Blossom back at the restaurant, probably plotting a new way to keep Betty from her friends or screw over what remained of her family.

It was unfair to blame Cheryl for everything that happened, but damned if Betty wasn't going to try. She was tired and scared and angry and splattered in another man's blood. And Cheryl was the only one around.

Since Betty had pushed Veronica away.

God, she should have left with Veronica, she thought for the six hundredth time since dawn. But back in Idaho, her head had been so filled with dread for Riverdale, dread for having to face everyone back there.

Everything sucked.

Probably Betty's own fault.

But Cheryl and her filthy family started it.

Betty played mental ping-pong like this all the way to the beach, every step a conflicting thought.

 _Should have left with Veronica, would rather die than go back to Riverdale, should have left with Veronica, the drug dealer's blood smeared across her kitchen floor…_

 _Guilty, murder accomplice._ No, _it was self-defense, self-defense. Still dragged a dead body out into the woods and pushed his car into a river._

( _Bad person_.)

 _But not worse than some, like the Blossoms. But maybe not Cheryl, because Cheryl had certainly never assisted in covering up a murder. No, Betty, not a murder, it was self-defense, self-defense..._

"It was self-defense. It was self-defense. Not guilty."

She repeated it over and over, trying to make it undeniably true, as if she could stabilize her morals with words like cement between bricks.

She looked up and saw the Pacific Ocean.

So, there it was.

She'd made it. She looked upon it and wanted to feel something great. Mostly, though, Betty just felt tired.

Tired of moving, of thinking, of breathing, of trying to justify her actions…

Maybe if it was any other time, Betty would have felt better. But it was spring break, and so the beach was crawling with drunk college students, scantily clad and ardently showing off their finely-sculpted bodies. Everyone was loud and rowdy, Betty wished for a quiet place.

She hoisted herself up onto the stone half-wall dividing the beach and the street, set her feet down in the sand. She looked out at the ocean and thought of the werewolf from the film, who'd killed animals and hurt people and drowned.

A flash of swinging the knife at the man from Greendale, of his blood that then turned to the blood on her kitchen floor.

Why did she have to contact Chic in the first place? What good thing was she possibly hoping would happen? He could only be bad news, given his past, his issues, his blood…

And back to the werewolf, arms frantic like she was just goofing around. She understood why Cheryl wanted to drown so many months ago at Sweetwater River. Not just because of Jason or her father, but because of the drama, the metaphor of it all. The long, drawn out suffering, spluttering for air and getting only damaging water, water that stings the lungs and sticks inside, that pushes her closer to death, pulls her unrelentingly under…

Everything felt like water.

A few tears slipped quietly from Betty's eyes, heavy and fat, landing on her lap in soft plops. She tried to keep from being obvious about it, allowed herself only a few quiet sniffles. No one likes crying in public.

A frisbee landed at her feet and Betty scrambled to wipe up her eyes and nose as the thrower approached.

"Hey!" The man hollered.

"Hey." Betty blinked the gloss from her eyes, leaned down and grabbed the frisbee.

"Thanks," the man said, taking the disc when Betty held it out. He was tall and lean, had hair dyed black, but red roots were peeking out at his scalp. And he was staring at her, head cocked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Betty lied, trying to keep her smile from wavering. "Rough day." Understatement, of course.

"You wanna play some frisbee?" the man offered. "We could hang for a while."

"Oh, I don't know." Betty smiled politely. "But thanks."

The man took a step closer. "Well, maybe you need to blow off some steam."

Betty shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he was about to proposition her.

"Because my buddies and I," he gestured toward his friends, who splashing about in the shallow waves without their frisbee, "are going to have a party tonight. A real wild party. But fun. Not like, gross and annoying."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, we'll have good music, good alcohol… Good other things."

"Drugs?"

"You're not a cop, are you?" The man with the frisbee laughed. "You look too young to be a cop."

"I'm not a cop."

"Then, yeah, good drugs. The stuff of legends."

"I'm not usually much of a party person," Betty admitted. She pictured the werewolf with black gums extending from her lips, fangs slipping out, well-manicured hands growing into coarse and clawed paws. "But I think it might be fun. I'm really only in town for tonight."

"Oh, that's perfect!" The man laughed. "It's one of those theme parties. End-of-the-world. Apocalypse. The last night on earth. You've gotta come."

"Okay, I might just do that. Can I bring my…" she hesitated to call Cheryl a friend, but she did so anyway, for lack of a better word.

"Yeah, I suppose you can." The man extended a hand and Betty shook it. "I'm Ben."

"Nice to meet you, Ben. I'm Betty."

"Betty. That's a nice name. The party's at the West Road Hotel, if you're serious about coming. Down that way just a couple of blocks." He pointed down the street. "Starts at nine."

"Nine PM?"

"Yep. Nine PM."

"Wild."

"You'll be there?"

The beach buzzed with carefree students, with sunshine, water on water.

"Yeah, I'll be there."

Ben smirked. "Sweet." He leaned against the half-wall. "So, what are you and your friend doing here only for tonight?"

"We're kind of on vacation," Betty said. "It's like a road trip thing."

"Fun."

"Uh, something like that."

"Not fun?"

Betty shrugged. It had been fun, at the beginning, when they were wearing robes and sipping champagne straight out of the bottle. And Betty thought Cheryl actually cared about her at least an ounce… "It has its ups and downs."

"I promise you the party will be an up," Ben smiled.

"If you say so."

"I should get back to my friends."

"Oh. Okay," Betty said. She sounded more disappointed than she was, just because she didn't want to go back to the diner and face Cheryl. She wouldn't really miss Ben's company, though she let him believe that was it because he gave a little smirk and stroked her shoulder.

"Can't wait for tonight."

"Can't wait."

And after another walk between the beach and the diner, Betty was entirely in her head, scolding herself, her friends, her family, mumbling and cursing under her breath.

She swore softly as she saw the walls of the diner rising up from the sidewalk in front of her. Back to making stupid decisions.

/

The party was probably one of those decisions. Cheryl had been easy to sway; she was always down for chaos, and the most apt word to describe the party was indeed chaos.

The bass pumped across the ballroom, which was poorly-lit and throbbing with a smattering of drunk teenagers dancing to the beat.

"Jesus, Betty, leave it to you to find the trashiest party in town."

"You threw a party exactly like this over Jughead's birthday."

"Uh, you were the one that planned that party, Cooper."

Betty rolled her eyes, opened her mouth to retort, but was interrupted by a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, you came!" It was Ben.

"Hey! I did," Betty said and slid his hand off of her arm. "Ben, this is Che—" Cheryl had left. "That's Cheryl," Betty corrected, pointing across the ballroom to where Cheryl was pouring something into a red Solo cup.

"She looks nice," Ben said. "Not friendly-nice. Well-groomed nice."

It was probably a lie; Betty and Cheryl had been wearing the same clothes all week and they were certainly not well-groomed.

"Do you want to come meet some of my friends?" Ben asked.

"Sure," Betty agreed, only because she couldn't think of anything better to do.

Ben walked her over to another room where the music was quieter, though the bass could still be heard thumping from the other room and rattling around in Betty's chest.

Ben introduced her to the people standing in a close huddle and drinking from red Solo cups. They were all dressed like he was: in dark colors with jewelry and piercings. Betty's mother would have called them delinquents and ruffians.

Despite this, they had gentle names like Ben and Andy and Ted. Betty found this oddly endearing, so she planted herself in the huddle and let them make conversation with her.

"So, Betty, Ben tells us you're on a road trip. You take a lot of road trips?" the one named Ted asked.

"Nope," Betty said honestly. "This is kind of a first."

"Nice. You and that other girl traveling alone?" Ben asked.

"Yep. Just blowing off steam, I guess."

"Are you still in high school?"

"Yeah. I'm a sophomore."

"Well why aren't you traveling with family, then?" Ben asked. "I always had to be with my family during break till I was in college."

Betty avoided the question. "You're in college? Where do you go?"

"Nowhere, anymore." Ben's face darkened a bit.

"What happened?"

"Money. Stopped being able to afford it."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It was just one of those things, I guess."

"I know what you mean."

Betty realized that Ben's friends were dispersing, mulling about the smaller room, leaving the two alone.

"I'm having fun on this trip," Betty lied, "but I do miss my boyfriend."

Ben raised an eyebrow, as she was hoping he would. "Boyfriend? Where does he live?"

"Same town as me. Far away from here."

Ben nodded solemnly. "Where's your friend? She seemed, uh, excited to be here."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that I saw her earlier and until just then, I've never seen anyone drink that much straight-up vodka before."

"She did _what_?" Betty hoped she'd misheard over the music from the other room.

"Yeah," Ben laughed, "she's crazy. But it's cool. That's what spring break is for, right?"

"I guess?" Betty turned around, looked back to see if she could spot the redhead somewhere in the other room, but it was hopeless. "But how do you have a spring break? You're not in school. Did your work give you time off?"

Ben laughed bitterly. "Oh, I'm eternally on break now, Miss Betty. All four seasons."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's okay. I think my luck's going to change soon."

"Why do you say that? Something coming up?"

"Something like that."

"What have you got planned, like—"

Betty was interrupted by Cheryl grabbing her on the shoulder, other hand white on the neck of a brown bottle.

"Betty!" She squawked drunkenly, too loud over the music.

"Cheryl… God, are you okay?"

"I'm _grrrrreat_ ," Cheryl slurred.

"You sound like Tony the Tiger," Betty said flatly.

" _Hell yeah!_ I love Toni."

"Really? The tiger?"

Cheryl bared her teeth in a mock snarl. "She's no tiger, she's a classless serpent bitch but she is, like," Cheryl grinned flirtatiously, " _yeah._ "

Betty stood in silence for a moment. "Okay?"

"But that's not why I found you. Betty. I am having an _insane_ night. Perfect climax to our Kerouac trip."

"What?"

"Only because of the intoxication. Not the misogyny and thinly-veiled racism."

Again, Betty could only say, "Okay…"

"Try some of this!" Cheryl foisted the bottle into Betty's hands.

"What is it?"

"No idea. Exquisite?"

"No thanks."

Cheryl's face went angry. "Come on, Cooper."

"Yeah, Cooper, it's spring break!" Ben cheered from behind her.

"Yes!" Cheryl pointed at him excitedly.

Betty rolled her eyes, took a swig, expecting beer. Instead, it tasted like hand sanitizer.

"Ew!" Betty shoved the bottle back to Cheryl, smacking her tongue against her mouth, trying to rid it of the strong taste. "Be careful with that."

"Just wait," Cheryl said with a snap and a point. "You'll feel it in a second."

"Cheryl, why on earth would you drink that?" Betty asked, shaking her head angrily. "Do you not remember the fiasco with Nick St. Clair?"

Cheryl reached forward, grabbed Betty by the collar. "I do."

She let Betty go with a push and stormed away.

"Your friend's a trip," Ben chuckled.

"I guess," Betty said reluctantly, annoyed at Ben and Cheryl's cavalierness. "I'm kind of concerned for her."

Ben wrapped her arm around Betty, and she eyed it hesitantly. "Actually, later tonight my friends and I are going to this little beach that no one goes to. It's a great place to talk and rest. You could bring your friend Cheryl. No drinking, no drugs."

"There are really drugs at this party?" Betty asked tensely. "Hard core drugs?"

"Yeah, honey, I told you there would be drugs at this party," Ben said as if he had warned her it was going to rain and she hadn't listened. "But there won't be at the beach. Can I count you two in?"

There was something not quite right about following a flirtatious, older, near-stranger to a secluded beach, Betty wasn't stupid. But the party was probably a worse scene, all drugs and alcohol and music so loud no one could hear you scream.

"Sure thing. When are we going?"

"My friends and I were thinking of taking off in like an hour."

"Sounds good," Betty complied. She found a couch in the corner, old and worn and stained with mysterium, but empty. And not drenched in strong-smelling liquor, like most everything and everyone else at the party.

She took a seat, started to feel whatever it was Cheryl had made her try. It was in her head, her ears. All fuzzy and warm, numbing. But something else, something sickening. Nothing like what she had felt after the champagne that damned first night on the road.

Betty tried to stop herself from ruminating in the rise and fall of the whole ugly journey. She had moped enough in the past few days. Instead, she got up and found an unopened brown bottle, retreated to the couch with it.

Whatever that chemically delicious beverage was, it sure made the time fly as Betty felt her rationality and her worries slip further and further from herself.

Fifteen blaring songs later, Ben approached Betty to tell her they were headed to the beach soon. Betty had to find Cheryl and drag her out of the madhouse.

It was hard to navigate the party, swimming in her own head and pushing past crowds of dancing drunks. "Cheryl?" Betty called, the alcohol putting her holler in a singsong voice. "Cheeeryl?"

"Betty!" Betty whirled to see Cheryl right in front of her, leaning back on her heels, still trashed.

"Hey, Cheryl, we're going to leave and go—" Betty was cut off by the feeling of Cheryl pressing her tongue against Betty's.

She pushed her cousin away, staggered backwards. "What the _hell?_ "

"Come on!" Cheryl shouted around her tongue, still hanging out, a white dot on the tip. "It's a game!" She took the little white pill out of her mouth. "I try to get it to dissolve on your tongue! It's fun, it's fun!"

"What the hell is wrong with you? What is that?"

"Oxycodone!" Cheryl beamed.

"What?" Betty's stomach twisted. "No, no, no. We are leaving and we are leaving now."

"We can't leave! They have heroin!"

"They have _what_?"

"Heroin! I might as well at least try the stuff that got my family so rich, right?"

"No. I'm not going to let you shoot heroin."

"Come on, Betty. We're not going to _shoot_ heroin, we're going to _snort_ it," Cheryl said as if it made a difference.

"I'm not going to let you do that, either!" Betty said shrilly, trying to reason over the alcohol. "You'll like, die, you're already so trashed."

"I am not," Cheryl huffed. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, Cheryl? You're not. You _just_ said you were on X," Betty said, her voice hoarse from trying to talk over the music.

"Well, yeah, that's exactly why I'm so fine, Cousin Betty!"

"Come on, we're getting out of here."

"At least tell me where we're going."

"To the beach. With Ben."

"Who the hell is Ben?"

"Some guy."

"I'm leaving just because you want to flirt with 'some guy.'"

"Well, I'm not letting you stay and probably kill yourself by overdose," Betty said with a roll of her eyes. She grabbed Cheryl by the arm, pulled her through the crowd and outside as Cheryl protested. She could only hear fragments of Cheryl's retaliation as the beat rose and fell.

"You know what your problem is, Elizabeth Cooper?" Cheryl shouted as they made it back to the street corner. Betty didn't answer, just folded her arms and waited for Ben. What she really wanted was to get back to a hotel and sleep off the cotton that that drink had packed in her head. "Your problem is that you think you're so much better than everyone else!"

"That's not true," Betty grumbled. "I just know that you shouldn't do freaking heroin at a sketchy party two thousand miles from home."

Cheryl scoffed.

"But, hey, fine, Cheryl. Next time you want to overdose on drugs or drown yourself in a river or burn your own house down or take some other insane, off-the-handle, glaringly dangerous course of action that could get you killed, maybe no one will be around to stop you."

"No one will be around to stop _me_? Hey, I didn't ask anyone to stop me from doing any of those things."

Betty raised an eyebrow. That Cheryl had been behind the fire at Thornhill was a drunken, angry guess. But _of course_ she'd been right; why would _anything_ in Riverdale ever just be a tragic accident?

"Maybe someone should stop _you_ before you beat the shit out of someone who's already down! Maybe someone should stop _you_ from roofying someone and almost drowning them in a hot tub as a torturous interrogation tactic!"

"I didn't—" Betty started, but stopped when she realized she had nothing to truthfully deny. "I'm not like that. I'm not like you, Cheryl."

"Really, Betty?" Cheryl paced back and forth. "Because I think you're _exactly_ like that. I think you can feel it. God, Betty, I thought you were so much better than everyone else. You thought you were so much better than everyone else! But you know what, Betty? You're a _Blossom_. You're cruel and poisonous and selfish just like everyone else. I _saw_ you abandon Veronica Lodge the other night. I know you're running from something. Something awful. You're—"

"Shut up, Cheryl. I am not like that. No one's evil just because of their blood." Betty though she could feel her skull rattling behind her eyes.

"You are a Blossom, Betty," Cheryl said evenly, dangerously. "And the Blossoms are evil. That's why your great grandfather is dead. That's why our families split down the middle and want strangle the other side out. That's why the Uktena are just bone meal in the ground, why Jason's gone, why Riverdale just keeps getting darker and darker and more and more corrupted and everything around us is so twisted and vile. _The Blossoms are irredeemable, Betty_. And I thought maybe you were proof otherwise, but I was wrong. You are the same. _You are exactly the fucking same, Betty Cooper."_

The road called from miles away, drowned out by the muffled party and by the awful tension left by Cheryl's words. Betty stared at the ground. Her blood felt hot and mean. Betty wanted to prove Cheryl wrong, wanted to put her in her place but she couldn't think of the right words.

She looked up.

A dark and empty street, Cheryl Blossom gone.

/

 **A/N:** _Holy hell guys how bout that Cheryl/Toni kiss last week… I yelped. I cried. That moment is one for the history books. It's homophobic that we have to wait so long for A Night to Remember but whatever. Reviews will help April 18th come faster._


	9. Vortex

She knew it wasn't real—the party was playing deafening, incessant rave music—but in her head, Cheryl was hearing the music of some divine violin.

Maybe she was dying. Cheryl pictured it: a weapon crossing her soft and feminine neck, ribbons of blood bursting out like a bow sliding across strings releasing beautiful music.

She grabbed her neck to see if her hands would come away bloody. No, but she still couldn't breathe. Cheryl tried to catch her breath, panicked. Despite everything, Cheryl didn't want to die. She didn't want to look like Jason had before they put him in the ground, grey and bloated and unfocused. She didn't want to take her last breath or hear a damning gunshot or be separated from her body. She just wanted it all to stop, without that awful unpleasantness.

Cheryl gripped the arms of the chair she'd retreated into, tried to stop the room from spinning. Whatever ecstasy was once in her had been seized by Betty freaking Cooper, leaving behind only the physical numbing and the horrifying removal from reality. She was upside down, had to keep from falling onto the ceiling…

No, that wasn't right.

But something was definitely wrong with gravity, Cheryl decided, gulping down nausea. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocked out all the movement that was so far from natural.

She was probably going to die. Or pass out. Or be raped. Or all of the above. Not in that particular order, of course. Every dancer, druggie, drinker, and wallflower at the party became a threat; paranoia was buzzing about Cheryl's head with sudden ferocity.

She staggered to her feet, tried to stop imagining them with a gun pointed at her head or awful intentions swirling through their brains.

"They're just regular people," Cheryl whispered, dazed, to herself. (Never mind that so many of the regular people in her life were, in fact, overtly malicious.)

She could still hear the inexplicable violin despite the party music thumping and rattling in her chest. And with every thump, her the lights got brighter, the room moved faster, the people got scarier, her heart leapt faster.

Her eyes met with unfamiliar eyes across the room. Beady eyes. Below, sharp teeth, a menacing grin. A person made to kill.

She looked away, realized everyone looked like monsters from children's books, from stories her mother had spent many childhood nights weaving.

Cheryl had to get out of there.

She stumbled forward, groped the closest wall for support.

"Betty?" She called in the most pathetic of whimpers. "Betty?"

A distant memory of Cheryl yelling at Betty would explain why her voice was almost hoarse. Had that really happened? But the memory felt like a dream slipping quickly away with every waking minute.

Another image, in a jarring flash: Betty with a knife, slashing it back and forth in a flurry of wrath.

Directed at Cheryl?

Unsure, one hand took itself from the wall and shakily went up to her face, trying to feel for blood or scabs.

Her cheeks were soft and warm, flawless. They felt wet, but her hands came away without any blood on them.

Cheryl had to sit down again, stupidly on the floor. She took in a breath and just let a moment or two pass, tried to keep the feeling of rising panic in check. She took another deep breath, tried to keep her being from floating right out of her body and into some obscene nightmare…

Too late.

Jason being shot by Clifford appeared violently. She'd replayed the security tape's footage in her head thousands of times since that awful night Betty called her, yet every time the image was fresh and sickening and just as dreadful as the first time she'd seen it.

This time, though, it was worse. The roles altered jarringly. Jason pulling the trigger. Cheryl tied to the chair, bloody and exhausted. Then, Penelope staring her down from across her outstretched arm, hateful and cold, but somehow almost casual as she aimed the weapon, as if ending someone's life was some annoying chore.

Cheryl jolted forward, tried to break out of the chair.

She waved her arms frantically for one brief moment, unrestrained in reality.

 _Tripping,_ she thought vaguely, but that thought was challenged by another: If she wasn't tied up with a gun to her head, that had to mean that she was the one with the gun.

No, no, no. There was no gun. No torture victim tied a chair in front of her. That hideous scene had already taken place. It was gone and done forever and Cheryl had never been a part of it. Never a part of it.

Everything at the party was normal. Elated teens and young adults flying high under neon lights. No one was going to die.

Except, maybe, from overdosing or alcohol poisoning. Both of which, Cheryl mused, might be a problem for her given she felt as though she was twelve feet above her body.

But no murderers, Cheryl reasoned, although the image of Betty Cooper slashing a knife was beginning to creep closer again, malice written all over Betty's face.

No, Betty was _not_ a monster. She was good. She was Betty Cooper, everyone's favorite girl next door. Cheryl closed her eyes, rearranged the picture: Betty Cooper sitting on the bleachers on a sunny day at Riverdale high, cross-legged in her bright Vixens outfit, all blue and gold and white, ponytail a perky golden halo behind her.

And a knife sitting beside her. And blood on her hands.

She was saying something to Cheryl, mouth moving quickly, urgently. Then she started laughing. Or screaming? Cheryl couldn't hear over the music. And Betty was getting farther and farther away.

 _Shit_ , she had to figure out what Betty was saying.

Cheryl took a sharp inhale, tried to pull herself together, and miraculously found her way to the door. She stumbled outside onto the California sidewalk. The air was tinged cool and fresh and tinged with salt; Cheryl inhaled, exhaled, and something inside her loosened. She could almost think with some degree of control.

Betty had been palling around with that gross emo guy. Probably trying to get whatever sick fix she'd been deprived of this week because Jughead hadn't come along on their expedition.

 _Refocus_.

She had said something about going to a beach? Cheryl wondered if that had been real or some fabricated, drug-induced memory. Why hadn't she come along? Night walks on the beach beat stifling, hellish parties any day.

 _Oh!_ Except when there's a bloated corpse on the shore, Cheryl remembered with sickening vividness. But even then, it's almost a toss-up.

Dread still anchored in her stomach, Cheryl slowly made her way across the street and down the roadside to the sea. She was vaguely aware that teen girls shouldn't be wandering lost and aimlessly on unfamiliar streets, wasted and helpless in the middle of the night, but her head was too fogged by the horrors of the past to focus too much on the present.

Maybe that was why these horrible things keep happening to her. Cheryl made a brief mental note to protect herself from the traumas of the present rather ruminate on those of the past. It was probably the drugs that made Cheryl feel like that obvious statement was groundbreakingly insightful.

The beach wasn't far; Cheryl could see the coastline, but Betty and that posse of obnoxious young delinquents were nowhere to be found and by that time, Cheryl couldn't even remember why she was looking for Betty in the first place.

Instead of walking the beach, (smashed and alone at high tide, a surefire recipe for disaster,) Cheryl took a seat on the border half-wall and took a good look at the ocean. Waves rolled onto the sand, dappled by moonlight and starlight, twisted and contorted. Cheryl closed her eyes, knew they shouldn't be moving like that.

She took in more of the sea air, let it be the only thing she felt, let it find her blood and bring her heartrate back to normal. It had limited success.

Suddenly, a short, staccato scream rang out from across the sand.

Cheryl tore her eyes open, sat up straighter, tried to discern if the scream had been real or another alcohol-addled illusion. Her attention was met only by the crashing of waves, so Cheryl sunk back down into an uncharacteristic slouch and tried not to think of which trauma had caused her subconscious to summon that awful scream.

Before she could find anything else to think about—and not for lack of trying—another cry shot across the beach. Not a human's but a dog's: a quick, crisp, pained yowl that had to be real because she could feel it vibrate in her ear.

Cheryl jumped off the wall, steadied herself, and followed the sound, dragging her feet through sand.

"Hey!" Betty's voice. Weak. Scared.

Cheryl strained her eyes and saw four silhouettes in the dark.

"Betty?" Cheryl broke into a clumsy run. "Betty!"

"What was that?" One of the silhouettes, now closer and far clearer (one of Ben's friends?), whirled to face Cheryl. "Hey!" he called angrily, menacingly.

"Hey!" He yelled again, this time concerned, and punctuated with a single brutal smack.

Cheryl was pushed backward, realized she'd run straight into him in a full sprint. She fell backward onto the sand, felt something residual on her head that wasn't pain exactly; Cheryl was senseless from whatever it was she'd coursed her body with the party.

She stumbled back to her feet, saw Ben cry and grab for his head in pain.

But she was invincible!

Cheryl's moment of pride was cut short when she saw that Betty was crying.

"What's going on?"

The two other guys still standing exchanged a glance, glared at Cheryl.

"Get out of here, bitch."

They were both holding knives.

"Betty… What's going on?"

"Shut up, don't tell her a thing," the one closest to Betty demanded, knife pointed threateningly at the blonde.

"Turn around and walk away," the other said gravely, fingers tightening around his own knife.

Cheryl wondered for a moment if perhaps the flash of Betty with the knife had been a vision of the future.

"Get the hell out!" Ben growled from the sand.

Cheryl's eyes wandered, fell on a dog, a big German Shephard tied to a stake in the ground and bleeding from its back, turning the sand below it black in the darkness.

These boys were doing something very, very wrong. The dog was contorted in pain and anger, growling softly at the boys.

Cheryl took a step backwards, as if she was about to surrender and turn away. She stopped and instead bent down and took the knife from the collapsed Ben.

The dog waited for a moment before realizing its own freedom; in that time, the two boys lurched forward with their knives and slashed at Cheryl.

One knife made it to her arm as Cheryl clumsily fell backward. Blood spurted back from her arm, but Cheryl didn't feel a thing.

Invincible!

She swung at him, landed her fist right in his face as Betty's expression leapt in surprise.

The other made a move, was stopped by Betty, who clubbed him with her fist.

Another flash of Betty slashing with that knife…

Quivering, Cheryl prayed this wasn't happening, but had to keep her grip on the man's raging arm, block it from smashing in her nice face.

She _did_ have a nice face, Cheryl thought loftily. It would be a shame if some angry teenaged beach bum were to ruin that for her.

Cheryl shoved the guy; he stumbled backward toward the dog, whose fight responses flared up finally and who leapt on the guy barking powerfully.

She raced forward, kicking sand with every sloppy, dramatic stride, then shoved the man attacking Betty as hard as she could. He fell forward, face hit Betty's with a comical-sounding _clunk_.

"Ow!" Betty shouted, almost accusingly. Were they mad at each other?

"Let's cut bait," Cheryl said with a grab at Betty's arm.

They got a few feet before Ben snatched at Betty's ankle from the ground, yanked her facedown into the sand.

Cheryl slid backward, pulled Betty to her feet.

"Why— _why do you do this_?" Betty howled at the man, Cheryl pulling her safely out of his reach.

"If I don't—if I can't—it's just me! It's just my fault! I can't let it be my fault, I can't…" He was weeping.

Betty and Cheryl spared a moment to watch him blubber and choke over his own words before realizing the pissed off dog wouldn't be able to hold off the two friends forever.

They turned and ran back to the car.

Cheryl sat in the passenger's seat, Betty in the driver's. They were silent for quite some time, trying to catch their breath, Cheryl waiting for the world to stop spinning in an awful, nauseating vortex.

"What, um," she started with a clear of her throat, "what just happened?"

Betty was silent, stared at the steering wheel in the dark, trying to form the words.

"Betty?"

"He seemed pretty nice. He was having a tough time. We went down to the beach and he was talking about it…" Betty took a deep breath. "And then one of his friends brought out the dog. And they all had this really awful look in their eyes. One of the was holding his knife at me.

"And then they started, like, chanting things…" Betty bit her lip. "They were devil worshippers or something. And they were going to sacrifice the dog and then… and then me."

"No way," Cheryl stammered. "No way. That doesn't happen in real life. They… They're insane."

"Yeah. They are. Batshit crazy. He said everything was going to turn around once I was gone."

Cheryl half-laughed. "I mean, yeah, everything would when they were tried for murder."

"Well, we were two runaway teenagers like two thousand miles from home. They might have gotten away with it."

"Please," Cheryl grunted. "If you mysteriously disappeared, Jughead would be on your murderers' asses like sap on maple trees."

Betty laughed lightly, said, "Still, we're not safe out here alone," and started the car.

"Where are you going?"

"A hotel or something?" Betty shrugged. "I really don't know."

"Okay. A hotel. We'll go back tomorrow." Cheryl felt ready.

The car revved, crawled out of the parking lot in front of the party, music still playing faintly from inside the hotel.

"I'm not like that, right?" Betty asked suddenly, scared. "I know it sounds kind of conceited, but please, tell me I'm not like that."

"Like what, exactly?"

"Like, I would sacrifice someone else just for the off-chance everything stops being sucky for me. Blaming everybody else, wanting to hurt—"

Cheryl couldn't help but laugh. "Betty, you're _nothing_ like that." She paused, finally remembered the context of the image of Betty cutting the air with that knife. The man from Greendale. The guy who was attacking them. She had been angry about that, for some reason. It didn't make any sense now. "And that guy—the man from Greendale—he was awful, too, and he deserved what he got."

Cheryl wondered, fleetingly, if she deserved what she got.

"Thanks, Cheryl," Betty said and then they both went quiet.

They ended up driving for another hour before stopping at a hotel, the radio quietly humming pop songs into the night. They passed hotel after hotel and Cheryl suspected that Betty kept passing them up because she wasn't willing to risk staying anywhere near the boys from the party. Which was fair. She was fine with getting far away from them, too, and she was drifting in and out of sleep the whole ride.

When at last Betty stopped in front of a modest motel, Cheryl was pulled from her sleep and the parking lot was spinning in greys and yellows. She sat up carefully, pushed the door open, and pulled herself up, holding too tightly to the sides of her car.

Wordlessly, Betty came around to the other side of the vehicle and helped Cheryl inside.

/

In the morning, her head felt too small, like everything inside of it was pushing on her skull excruciatingly, like it was going to explode with the slightest motion.

" _Jesus Christ,_ " Cheryl hissed at the ceiling, the motel room painfully bright. Of course they'd find the only well-lit motel room in the world for the morning she was impossibly hungover. The blankets were stiff and scratchy; the pillow felt like a rock.

Cheryl forced herself out of bed, into the bathroom, tried not to puke in the shower.

She was sick of foreign tubs and miniscule shampoos. She wanted to be twelve years old again and showering in her room at Thornhill on some Saturday morning, Jason out for a jog, her father in the maple trees and her mother entertaining Nana Rose.

But that was all behind her and she settled her wishful thinking on the shower in the bathroom at Thistlehouse, remembered its every grey tile and the feeling of the glass separating it from the rest of the room. It was familiar, at least.

She would be back there soon, Cheryl told herself with equal parts love and dread.

She turned the shower off, not sure she could stand much longer, shoddily dried herself off, and threw those same damn clothes on that she'd been wearing every day for the past… How many days had it been? Cheryl was too tired and sore to figure it out. Felt like a year. Maybe two.

"You look good," were the first sarcastic words Cheryl heard when she emerged from the bathroom. She probably looked like hell. Betty was smirking.

A threatening grumble was the only response Cheryl could muster before flopping back down onto the bed.

"We have to check out before noon," Betty said.

"And what time is it now?" Cheryl asked, trying not to move her mouth or her chest or her head too much as she spoke.

"Your face is like two feet away from a clock," Betty said.

It was true. There was definitely a clock on the bedside table, but Cheryl was certainly not about to turn her head a full ninety degrees or even move her eyes to focus on anything. "And what, dear cousin, does the clock _say_?"

"It's ten-thirty. I'm showering and then we're leaving."

Cheryl halfheartedly hummed her consent to this plan.

Betty emerged from the bathroom far too soon, smelling like cheap soap and stale clothes. Cheryl wanted to puke again.

"Let's go," Betty said, slinging Cheryl's backpack over her shoulder. "Checkout time."

Cheryl followed with a stiff countenance. She let Betty talk to whoever was behind the front desk, proceeded to the car and immediately sat down in the passenger's seat. She took the stuffed animal from the backseat and used it as a pillow.

"Be careful with Fox Doll," Betty scolded when she opened the driver's side door and sat down. "He's fragile."

"Like, emotionally?"

"Like we got him from a claw machine and probably costed a total of seventy cents to produce. Don't let him tear." Betty started car and then they were rolling down the streets of California, leaving the ocean behind them.

"Wow, you really care about stuffed animals, Cooper. I bet you once thought your Beanie Baby collection would be worth thousands," Cheryl said, rearranging Fox Doll under her screaming head.

"Only because my mom told me it would," Betty grumbled. "You know I got yelled at when I removed the tags?"

Cheryl snorted. It sounded about right.

She looked out the windshield, at the road stretching out in front of them once again, the veins of the country all delivering people to every possible location across the continental U.S., its concrete reach swelling with life and movement, the complex system that carried them all the way to the edge of the ocean.

And one of the roads would take them home.

/

 **A/N:** _Hey ya'll! My fickle ass just wrote like 80 pages of this fic before completely losing steam and I hit a block for a really long time. But I managed to finish off this chapter and there's only one left at this point. We are almost to the end of the road! Reviews will keep me going!_


	10. Against the World

Betty wasn't a very big fan of driving. She had an older sister and a doting mother, so she had never had to drive herself many places. And on dates at Pop's or the theatre or the park, it was Jughead who brought his dad's truck or his motorcycle. The lack of practice made her a nervous driver, unsure of herself, especially on the highway.

But her head was filled with thoughts of home, of those days when her mother would drive her to school and back, when she Polly made midnight runs for pizza or burgers or ice cream on midsummer nights.

She wanted to cry, knowing Polly was so far away on the farm upstate and her mother was not at all who she thought in those elementary school days. Yes, the former PTA chairwoman was an accomplice in a killing, but it was self-defense. Love for her son, her family.

That certainly was how it felt from two thousand miles and four days away.

Betty realized that in all her fear and exhaustion, she had forgotten to charge her phone the night before. She wanted to call home, to hear her mother's voice and tell her that she was on her way home.

There were many miles to go before she could do that. Even more before she'd see her mother again. But that was okay. Betty switched on the radio, turned it up.

Cheryl let out a groan like an agitated cow and turned it down.

They fought over the volume for a few minutes, Cheryl speaking only in grunts and smacks to Betty's shoulder, and Betty laughing at her misery.

They pulled off the highway an hour later and got hash browns and flapjacks at the drive through of a fast food place; neither of them wanted to stop for too long. They wanted to keep driving, keep putting less and less distance between them and their friends.

They were back on the road in minutes, and Betty noticed that she was quickly tiring of fast food and diners.

Which is saying something, because she practically lived in Pop's. But now, what she wanted was a homecooked meal.

So, they trudged on, Cheryl allowing Betty to slowly turn the music volume up as the hours wore on, either because her hangover was getting better or because she was entirely unconscious. But it was okay. They didn't need to talk; Betty's head was swarming with thoughts of home and family and friends.

As the sun was starting towards the horizon, Cheryl told Betty to pull off the highway at the next exit. So she wasn't unconscious.

Betty and Cheryl had intentionally ordered an excess of food at breakfast and ate the leftovers for lunch. It had been greasy and caloric, but she was undeniably hungry again.

As she sent the Chevrolet rolling down the exit, Betty recognized the place, the signs and street names and buildings.

"Did we come this way on our way out?" Betty asked.

"Mmm-hmm," Cheryl hummed. "Remember that restaurant we were at when you found our story in the newspaper?"

"Uh-huh," Betty said cautiously, guilt reappearing at the memory.

"Well, they had this divine-looking cheesecake pictured on their menu and you clamored out of the place before I could have any."

The town the exit spat them out at could have been Riverdale; Betty remembered how unextraordinary her town was to an outsider. The restaurant was tremendously plain—it had a name like Jack's or Horace's or some other white male name. Betty was, in fact, surprised that Cheryl could pick the place out off the highway.

She must have really wanted cheesecake.

She still looked impressively hungover, Betty felt bad that they didn't have any sunglasses in the car to complete the look. She wondered if cheesecake was one of those foods that was supposed to help with hangovers. Betty had never gotten properly wasted in her life, but she guessed that the creamy dessert might help.

They decided to draw out the meal, ordered drinks and looked at appetizers and had their first real conversation of the day.

"Last night. Bad," Cheryl opened.

"Last night very bad," Betty concurred. "I can't believe I'm actually pretty much ready to go back to Riverdale."

"Amen," Cheryl said. "Who do you want to see first?"

"My mom, obligatorily," Betty said. "I must be putting her through hell right now."

There was something like jealousy in Cheryl's tired eyes; Betty knew her mother might as well be the Devil, but she didn't know what to say, so instead she ordered a plate of cheese fries for the table and asked Cheryl who it was she wanted to see.

"Josie. Veronica," Cheryl said. The latter name was a surprise and there was something hesitant about the way Cheryl said Josie's name. Again, Betty was tactful enough not to pry. Maybe if she was the person everyone thought she was, she would have. Maybe it would have felt good for Cheryl to share whatever things were on her mind but they had had plenty of time with that, and they would still on the way back. At some point, she would bring it up. But Betty didn't need to know every detail of her cousin's life to know who was sitting across the table from her.

Whatever it was Cheryl was regretting, Betty was willing to forgive. She had spent too much time lately being resentful and, dear God, she didn't want to turn into Ben From The Party. Despite the Black Hood's best efforts and the whole damn world's best efforts, Betty was not going to become some caricature of evil and blame.

Other people's pain was not a solution, just an unfortunate side effect of living. Betty trusted Cheryl knew that, too.

"I want to sit at Pop's with Jughead," Betty said suddenly. "I want to see his goofy face when they bring out the burger." Jughead always eyed a hot plate of burgers and fries as if it was the first food he'd seen in days.

Sometimes, maybe, it was, considering his life at the trailer park.

The air in the restaurant now was warm and thick with the smell of All-American cuisine cooking in the kitchen; Jughead would have loved it.

Betty had been hit by Ben and his thuggish friends before Cheryl found them. They struck had struck her in the stomach once and it knocked the wind out of her, but now she could practically taste their fries through her nose.

They ate cheesecake and talked about what everyone back in Riverdale was probably saying.

"Reggie is definitely going to say we hooked up," Cheryl said. She was right.

"Given our town's history, there's no question that everyone thinks we've been murdered," Betty said.

"Even despite all your communication with your friends and family?" Cheryl asked.

"Murder finds a way."

Cheryl sat back in the booth, pushed her plate of fries away. "Do you think everyone's going to treat us differently when we get back? Like we're going to run off again."

"Maybe. Remember the day everyone thought FP killed Jason?" Betty asked cautiously. "They were all looking at him like he was going to murder them."

Cheryl took a sip of water. "I got a little of that after the truth came out. But it was mostly outweighed by sympathy."

Betty wondered how people would react if they found out about the body that had been in the Cooper kitchen.

"Do you remember that day we got rained in in gym and we got to play dodgeball instead of running the mile outside?" Cheryl asked randomly.

"Um, yeah, I do," Betty said and wished they could be gone long enough to miss the day they would actually have to make the four dreaded laps around the track outside.

"We were all getting so dramatic about the game, blowing off steam, remember?"

Betty did, recalled beaning Veronica with the ball and the horrifying _smack_ that hopefully didn't hurt as much as it sounded like it did.

"Well, when Reggie got me out, I yelled at him: _I'm gonna kill you, Mantle!_ You know, joking around and being overaggressive."

"Reggie said you couldn't if you tried."

"Yeah," Cheryl said. "But then after class, Coach Clayton pulled me aside and looked in my eye and said so strictly, 'You _can't_ say that.'"

"What?"

"He was like, 'After what your father did, you can't say that.' As if anyone thinks I'm actually going to kill Reggie Mantle in cold blood over a game of dodgeball. It's just dodgeball."

Betty laughed. Everything seemed so stupid in that moment, like every bad thing that had happened to them had been the product of gross, almost comical overreactions. Hell, she'd driven across the country just to get out of the house.

The Black Hood seemed especially laughable, too; a self-righteous murderer claiming terrorism was doing the town some big favor.

Stupid, stupid world.

Their cheesecake was served, and it was far better than Betty had expected. The trip had picked up again, it seemed, the two of them giggling pointlessly in a booth so far away from home.

Until suddenly, across the table, Cheryl's smile shut down.

"Betty, we need to leave," she said urgently, eyes tracing something behind the blonde in the entryway.

"What?" Betty turned to look, but Cheryl waved her hand in warning.

"Do not turn around."

"Oh my God, what?"

"It's that creep from the rest stop. He just walked in," Cheryl's voice was so quiet that Betty was straining to hear her.

Her stomach dropped. She wasn't ready for another fight. "The man from Greendale? Are you sure"

"Yeah, it's either him or his identical twin with a matching gash through his face," Cheryl said dryly. Betty had cut the man from his left temple to the right corner of his mouth. It was not a wound that would be fading any time soon.

The two girls were silent for a moment, weighing their options, the stillness of the moment stifling.

Cheryl finally spoke, eyes still trained on the man across the room. "Okay, just sit really still. When he gets seated, we will slowly move out of the restaurant and maybe then that modern-day bounty hunter won't even see us."

Betty nodded, holding her breath. With any luck, the man wouldn't be seated anywhere near them.

Of course, anyone with Blossom blood had no luck at all to begin with, and the man was lead right past them and into the booth right behind Cheryl.

Betty tried to avoid eye contact, but from what she could see, the man hadn't recognized them yet.

They sat completely still in the booth, Betty trying to tell if the man from Greendale was watching them from the corner of his eye like she was him. He didn't seem to be, he was staring into his lap and clenching and unclenching his jaw in upset.

"You all finished there?" The perky voice of their waiter made Betty and Cheryl flinch; both of them had been too engrossed in the man's demeanor.

Neither of them answered.

"You finished?" the waiter tried again.

"Uh, yes, sorry," Betty said as quietly as she could. "Can we get the check, please?"

"Of course!" The waiter cleared the empty cheesecake plate, retired to the kitchen, and came out moments later with the bill.

She had barely turned her back by the time they were standing up, Cheryl having slapped down a couple of bills.

"Keep the change," she whispered.

Out of the corner of her eye as she was turning around, Betty saw the man move. He was standing up.

"Move," she mumbled, pushing Cheryl's back as they stumbled out the door.

They were racing through the parking lot, jumped over the doors into the car without even opening them.

Betty was in the driver's seat; she still had the keys and jammed them into the ignition as fast as she could, rolled the car backward and out of the parking spot.

The man from Greendale was climbing into his truck.

"God, _of course_ he has a truck," Cheryl grumbled. "We should have a psychopath bingo game going. We could have a blackout by now."

Betty cut the wheel and bolted out of the lot. The man from Greendale was hot on their trail.

"Just get on the highway and we will be fine, we'll lose him," Cheryl said, though her voice was far from confident.

And Betty suddenly couldn't remember how the hell the roads in this town worked.

"Wh-where did we come from agai—" Betty started, but was cut short by the crisp sound of a gunshot.

Cheryl dropped into her seat, petrified. Betty leaned so close to the wheel she could barely see out the windshield. She was definitely going the wrong way to get to the highway.

Two more gunshots and Betty heard Cheryl gasp desperately for breath, reminding her to stop holding her breath; she certainly couldn't black out behind the wheel. Have to keep a cool head.

Despite her best efforts, the car was swerving wildly because Betty couldn't keep her hands in one place.

"Drive _faster_ ," Cheryl hissed, looking out the side view mirror at the truck that was rapidly approaching. She clawed at the car controls and the car's roof too-slowly made its way into the closed position.

They were on their way out of the city. If no one had called the police by now, certainly no one would once they got onto some empty country road.

"Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot," Betty cursed angrily.

"Don't say that," Cheryl snapped. She was right, considering.

A gunshot sounded horribly, somewhere behind them the bullet tore open a hole in the roof.

Panicked, Betty cut a hard left, hopping the truck wouldn't be able to follow. Her prayers were not answered; the man from Greendale was still screaming curses at them from her truck.

They were coming up on a bridge; it was low enough that they would probably survive the fall, but Betty was still horrified she wouldn't be able to keep the Chevrolet on course.

She couldn't even keep the cars on course in Mario Kart; the bridge at the end of one level (what was it called? DK Jungle?) had always given her trouble, even though it was perfectly straight and the last obstacle before the finish line. Betty was going to go off the bridge, she thought in horror.

"Go faster," Cheryl chided despite Betty's concerns.

 _This isn't freaking Mario Kart_ , Betty thought, and steeled herself up to make it to the goddamn finish line. She was there, almost there, almost there, and a glimpse in her rearview mirror told her that the man from Greendale was starting to fall behind, he was fumbling with his shotgun in the front seat.

They were a quarter of the way across the bridge, the end closer.

Halfway, Betty sure she could make it now.

 _Bang!_

A harsh noise knocked Betty's confidence, left her wondering what was going on.

The car was slowing and she could see the man from Greendale too closely in her rearview mirror, every crease of his resentful face, his expression so dramatic his wound was opening and tiny trails of blood were working their way down his face.

Had she been shot?

"Cursed car, cursed _car!_ " Cheryl screeched, slamming two fists down on the dashboard.

The car. It had given out.

They were still moving, but barely, and the man from Greendale looked like he was going to shoot to kill.

Betty held her breath, floored the gas, and sent hand over hand to drive the car right off the bridge.

They fell ten feet, twenty, then the hood of the car hit the dirt with an earsplitting chorus of destructive sounds and both their faces hit the dash.

"Do not move," Betty urged almost silently, though she probably didn't have to tell Cheryl, who was frozen in fear and pain. "We are dead," she said coyly anyway.

"Roger," Cheryl managed.

"Dammit to _hell_!" They heard the man from Greendale scream from the bridge.

Two rapid gunshots fired, struck the back hood of the car with a deafening noise that was almost impossible not to flinch at.

The man from Greendale didn't leave; he stood on the bridge and paced and cursed at the top of his lungs, to nobody. He probably assumed they were dead, the dim evening light keeping him from seeing them still intact in the car.

At this point they really should have been; how many times had they cheated death?

As the man continued cursing them out from above, Betty tried to count. She probably should have been murdered at some point while investigating Jason's murder. Definitely should have been shot by the Black Hood by now. Should have been killed by the man from Greendale the first time, killed at the beach for Ben's fortune. Maybe some other instances were falling through the cracks, Betty thought, remembering each instance with sickening clarity.

/

It was completely dark by the time either of them stirred; Cheryl took in a deep breath. Betty followed suit.

"Is he gone?" Cheryl ventured more loudly than she would have if she wasn't certain he was.

"Yeah, I would bet he is," Betty said at a normal volume. She turned the car off, which she should have done a long time ago since white smoke was issuing from the front hood, but she didn't want to alert the man from Greendale. "Can you stand?" she asked because she wasn't sure she could herself.

"I think so." Cheryl sounded strained as she unbuckled her seatbelt which, probably did save lives today, and tried to pry the car door open. It was too screwed up to get open easily, and for once the roof was up, so both struggled with the door until finally Betty got hers open. Cheryl crawled over the console and followed Betty out the driver's side.

They turned and examined the damage done, the car completely totaled. The front hood was all scrunched up, pressed between the ground and a tree. The back of the car now had two distinctive bullet holes in the trunk, and the bumper had fallen off of the back from the impact. Betty understood why the man from Greendale hadn't come down the slope to check if they were still alive.

It was twofold, the first reason being that the fall looked utterly brutal and the second being that the slope from below the bridge to back on the road was pretty intense.

"Sorry about the car," was all Betty could think to say.

"Eh, it's fine," Cheryl said without taking her eyes from the crash. "I mean, If I cared that much about it I wouldn't have brought it on a week-long road trip across the States."

A beat.

Cheryl turned away. "I mean, it's the car my brother drove to his death in so. I guess I'm kind of happy to see it go."

Betty followed her cousin up the hill.

"Where are we gonna go?" Betty asked as they made their way up the steep incline.

"Back into town. Find police. Turn ourselves in," Cheryl planned vaguely.

It was enough for Betty.

Dirt and leaves slid with their every step and made them work to get back on the road. Overhead, a white plastic bag stood out in the night, caught in the branches of a tall tree, the wind sending it rippling violently on the branch like flag.

They tread on.

Later, they would be back in Riverdale, the town the Black Hood had terrorized, the town whose South Side had held Jason Blossom captive for the week leading up to his death, the town where all the horrors had taken place.

They would be serenated by the smell of freshly-cut grass and flowers blooming for Spring.

Betty's house would look exactly the way it did on all the mornings she'd walked with Archie to school, the he'd left her heartbroken (the night Jason's body had been found in the river, eyes blank and staring at the sky). It would look the way it had when Chic brained a man, but the house would keep her secrets, continue to chronicle her life.

They would return and Riverdale would be Riverdale, a twisted town in a twisted world. It would have its depravities and its comforts. Underground, there would be bodies and above ground there would be the people who helped bury them.

Soon she would be back, yes, but Betty knew that there was bone meal underfoot no matter where she tread.

/

 **A/N-** _The moral of this story is that the world sucks everywhere, but with some people it sucks a little less. Also: always wear your seatbelt._


End file.
